This page is intended to help us select the colors for your web site... think of it like using paint chips...

Some of this may seem technical, but don't let that put you off -- anything technical is also visual -- and the visual part is the important part...

Colors are so personal... I would like to give you as much opportunity as you wish to participate in the color selection for your site... thus please play around with this page - run the mouse cursor over any of the special 'colors of interest' (top of page) and the background will change to that color - or - click on any of the 'color chips' in the body of the page to change the background to match the 'color chip'.

The quotes at the top of the page are just like an embroidery sampler, simply a few examples of what the two basic font types look like in a few sizes and colors commonly used for body text.

Why bother with this? First off, I hope that you'll think it is fun. If not, please don't feel like you have to spend any more than minimal time on it. Secondly, colors communicate, and I need feedback from you in order to make your site communicate your message accurately. I think it helps us create a better site if you understand a little about what is possible and how things work. Also, this color tool page facilitates more precise communication. Please notice the ample quantity of shades of red, for example.

I'm hoping that this tool will enable you to select a color scheme - at minimum, perhaps something general like 'black & red & teal & white' - in which case one of us has to pick the specific shades -- it can be either me or you, as you wish, although I reserve the right to attempt to talk you into or out of certain color schemes ;).

When you are picking colors, if possible, stick to those that say 'SAFE'... the reason for this follows, if you are interested.

All monitors are not created equal - what you see on your computer is not necessarily the same thing your neighbor sees. Some monitors are capable of more colors than others, and the differences between them can create problems -- with the worst case being 'dithering' which can make a site illegible... other issues to watch are that some patterns which look really great on new monitors, look dark, almost unintelligible, or washed out, on less-capable monitors.

Back 'in the beginning' computer monitors could only display a couple colors. For example, on the Apple //e, you could have black, white, yellow, red, blue, orange, green -- that's all I remember but there must have been one more (to make 8). If you wanted purple, you had to alternate dots of red and orange (using alternating dots of 2 colors to fool the eye into seeing a 3rd color is 'dithering' and it's ok if you're doing it on purpose).

Yes, computers can now display millions of colors on their monitors, but they don't yet all do it the same way.

Until very recently, it was recommended that web sites limit their palette to 216 specific colors - the so-called 'browser safe' color set -- meaning that it was safe to assume that if you told the page to display a canary yellow, it would indeed be canary yellow on every else's screens, not gold or brownish, and not just plain yellow.

There are enough colors in the 'safe' set that most of the time it is possible to stick with them, but sometimes it's not -- for example, it's very difficult to get a good earthtone palette using just 'safe' colors.

Fortunately there is a fairly-new extension - the 'named colors', which permit a lot more freedom... however, although they are all supposed to be safe (except on dinosaur systems), some combinations still don't look quite right on older monitors and laptops, so whatever colors we are going to use should be tested together before we consider the choices final.

The 'color chips' on this page are a combination of the (new) 'named' colors and the 'safe' colors. This is a tool I originally developed just for myself and am now developing to assist you. I started it for a site that used a primarily blue color scheme so I've integrated most of the blue 'named' and 'safe' colors. I've also picked out and integrated the majority of the greens and reds. However, there is a 'blob' of colors on the bottom of the page (before the start of this text) -- those are 'safe' colors which I still need to integrate / create 'color chips' for.

Diane          

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