This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Colors and Windows
For choosing color, Windows users have a single, difficult dialog box to deal with, whereas Mac users get several different user-friendly options. Sorry, folks, that's the way it is.
To use the System Color picker (Windows)
- Open the Color picker (
Figure 3.64
) by clicking on any Color Picker button
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Figure 3.64 Click on the Color Wheel button on the Color picker to open the System Color picker.
- On the Color picker, click on the Color Wheel button
. The Color dialog box will appear (
Figure 3.65
). - You can choose one of the preselected colors by clicking on it, or you can select a slot for a custom color by first clicking on one of the Custom Colors boxes at the left of the dialog box.
- Click on a hue (color) in the large colors box, and then click on a shade (lighter or darker) in the narrow panel to the right of that. The combination of your clicks will be displayed in the Color|Solid box.
- To select this color, click the Add to Custom Colors button. Your color will appear in the box you selected in Step 3.
- Click OK to close the Color dialog box. The hex code for the color you chose will appear in the Color text box.
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Browser-Safe Colors
You may have heard something about browser-safe color schemes. There are 216 colors that both Netscape and Microsoft browsers on both Windows and Macintosh platforms use, and these colors are called browser safe. It's true that nowadays True-Color and High-Color monitors can better match a color palette, and it's also true that today's better video cards can store more than 256 colors in memory. However, Macintosh and Windows still veer apart in their treatment of color palettes. (For a technical discussion about how color palettes work, and the difference between 8-bit, High and True color treatment, see the links page on the Web site for this book.)
At any rate, browser-safe or Web-safe colors are colors that most closely match, instead of producing a near match or dithering, when presented on different computer screens. The colors in the browser-safe area all contain pairs of the following numbers in their hex code: 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF. Windows colors are generally slightly darker, whereas Macintosh colors are more accurate and are described as lighter and brighter. If you have access to both Windows and Macintosh computers near each other (try putting a laptop next to a monitor from the other platform), open the same Web page on both machines, and you might be surprised by the differences in many colors.
The Color picker that you'll see when you click on any color selection button (Figure 3.66), in a dialog box or in the Property inspector, is comprised of these browser-safe colors, some of which repeat in the palette's 252 squares. If you're planning your page around browser-safe colors, the Color picker is a good place to start.
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Figure 3.66 Click on the Color Wheel button on the Color picker to open the Color dialog box.
Additionally, you'll notice that the pointer for the Color picker is an eyedropper rather than a regular pointer. You can use the eyedropper to select any color that you can see on your desktop, including colors in images.
From the options menu on the Color picker, you can toggle on and off the Snap to Web-safe option. If you choose a non-Web-safe color such as one within a photograph or within one of the non-Web-safe panels, Dreamweaver will convert it to a Web-safe color if this option is on. That means if you need an exact match, you should turn this snapping off.