[thelist] web-safe pallette

[Stephen Rider]

On Jan 7, 2005, at 7:31 AM, Linda R. wrote:

> 16 bit, or "High color" was originally developed for artists who work 
> in CMYK color space. 16 bits can be evenly divided into 4 bits per 
> channel—4 Cyan, 4 Magenta, 4 Yellow, and 4 Key (blacK). RGB is a three 
> value color space. 16 bits can’t be evenly divided by 3, so you end up 
> with an extra color bit. That’s where things go wonky.
> ...
> Different display card manufacturers have different ways of dealing 
> with that 16th bit.... This color shift between systems is why the 
> background color of a GIF matches the background color of an HTML page 
> on my system but doesn’t match it on yours.

THANK YOU!  God, that's been driving me crazy -- I notice it again 
every once in a while and could never figure out if the coder screwed 
up, of if the computer was off kilter... or what.  It makes no sense to 
me that something as basic as color can't be standardized across 
computers.

Of course...
<tip type="precise color matching to a background">
If you want a gif to precisely match the background color of a web 
page, you can use a solid-color gif as the background-image for the 
Body (in addition to specifying it in HTML).  The color of a gif will 
match another same-color gif more reliably than it will a 
HTML-specified RGB color.
</tip>

Cool.