Color Creation

The most comon way, for webpages, that colors are created is by using hexadecimal characters as representations for the values of the colors. These are essentially "light values", and define the strength or weakness of the absense or presense of light: it all depends on whether or not you're a half-full or half-empty type of person. "00" Represents the darkest of colors, and in itself is black. "FF" is white.

Hexidecimal Colors Explained

Before you can understand Hex colors, you must understand what a Hexidecimal character is, as well as the value or weight it might represent. If you are familiar with root-words: Hex means 6 and Dec means 10. 6 + 10 equals 16. The hexidecimal system has 16 characters: 0123456789ABCDEF. I'm sure you have played poker, solitaire, or another card game before. Letters in the Hex system works just like playing a card game: Letters are worth more: A=10, B=11, C=12, D=13, E=14, F=15. Just in case you are confused, thinking "But if F equals 15, and you said Hex+Dec=16..", you might be forgetting about "0", zero is a number too.

The Hexidecimal Color system could also be explained as being a math system of equating what values equal what colors. Every different 6-character hex combination is a completely different color. Since we are talking about 16 different values that fill 6 different locations, there are 16^6 total combinations (16^6 = 16,777,216). As you will learn about "216 Web Safe Colors" below, some monitors or operating systems can only display 216 or 256 colors, some can only display 16,386, some can display the full 16+ million.

Hexidecimal colors consist of 6 characters, 3 sets of 2. Red, Green, and Blue comprise each of the sets. You probably learned that Red, Yellow, and Blue are the three primary colors, when you were younger. Well, that may apply to crayons and paint, but not light. In the internet-hexidecimal-light world, to get "Yellow" without referencing it as "Yellow", you have to mix the strongest Red ("FF"), strongest Green ("FF"), and weakest Blue ("00"). This would be: "FF" + "FF" + "00", or "FFFF00".

In a 6 character hex-color, each set of the 3 sets of 2 color definitions has 256 combinations (16 x 16). RR+GG+BB of red, green, blue, is how hex colors are defined.

RGB Colors: They are the same as Hex colors

To convert a RGB color to a Hex color, or Hex to RGB, is very easy to do. In a hex color, the first character of each set of 2 characters is the strongest, it has a multiplier of 16. The second character has a multiplier of 1, so its value really doesnt 'change'. For our example, FF306C is a neon pink color. Its RGB numeric value is 255+48+108. ([16x15+15][16x3+0][16x6+12]). Remember, "F" has a value of 15, "C" equals 12... RGB colors are not meant to be used in regular html, such as in font colors, background colors, border colors, etc. RGB is typically used in JavaScript, C++, and other C-languages. Always use regular color names or hex colors to satisfy your html color codes cravings.

Web Safe Colors

In the 1990's, most computers and internet browsers only supported, were only capable of displaying, 256 different color combinations. Even earlier, there were only 16 colors availible. Even earlier, there were only two: Typically Black(background) and Green(foreground/text) or Black(background) and White/Gray(foreground/text).

The availible 256 colors were not the exact same 256 colors from one computer operating system to another. Because of this, the decision was made to have colors standardized. In the computer and internet world, standardizing practices is very important. These standardized colors were known as the 216 Web Safe Colors. The main reason behind doing this was so that all computers would be able to display the same colors. If a "non-safe color" was attempted to be displayed on a computer that could not display that specific color, the color would usually display as the next closest 16-color or 216-color. For example: #4488EE would probably actually be displayed as #3399FF or #0000FF (but these are just my opinionated-guesses, its been a long time since I have worked with such an old computer)

Today, it is not as important to use these "Web Safe Colors" because with the current operating systems, and the olders versions that have been availible for many years, millions and millions of colors can be displayed. However, computers and operating systems that are still affected by this 256 color restriction, are still used today. From my understanding, these old computers are mostly used in 3rd world countries, poor schools, and anyone else associated with "poverty level income". I have no statistics to back this up though.

One last mention: You don't have to use Hex colors for everything. You can also use web named colors. However, these are pretty much your only two options of naming or creating colors when it comes to html. Here are a few examples just to make sure you know what I mean.

<body bgcolor="maroon"> versus <body bgcolor="#800000>

<font color="teal"> versus <font color="#008080">

<table bordercolor="deepskyblue"> versus <table bordercolor="#00BFFF">

<hr color="blue"> versus <hr color="#0000FF">