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Color on the Web
Lynda.com: Browser-safe color palette Lynda Weinman is the virtual grandmother of Web design (though I doubt she'd be thrilled with that title). Her books on Web graphics and color are sine qua non in the industry. Here, she offers up the 216-color, browser-safe palette organized in two fashions for easy reference. Who'd have thought a 216-color palette could be so limiting? The fact is that when you hold that palette up against the millions of Web sites out there, it's hard to stand out from the crowd. But you can dither combinations of Web-safe colors to create literally millions of colors. Colormix.com makes it easy, with an intuitive, JavaScript-based interface. You can either choose two or three colors from the Web-safe color cube to dither, or you can choose a color to match and Colormix will do the work for you. Visibone: Webmaster's color laboratory
Yeah, it sounds like a Fisher Price toy for Web developers, but it's a very handy resource for establishing a Web-safe palette for your site. All 216 colors are in a pinwheel-like arrangement
(get the poster for $15!); click on a color to get the hexadecimal, RGB, and CMYK codes for that color as well as a catchy non-Crayola name such as "Spring-Spring-Yellow" or
"Light Hard Azure." Click another color, and your previous choice will appear as a swatch so you can see how they work together. You can compare up to eight colors in all on visibone.com/colorlab/. Got a headache from looking at too many colors? Picking a color scheme isn't everyone's strong suit. Paletteman's names for pre-selected palettes may bring to mind a wine tasting, with epithets such as "tropical" or "full-bodied." If the prefab palettes leave a bad taste in your mouth, feel free to tinker with the colors by using the handy JavaScript color surfer to the side. When you've settled on an eye-pleasing selection, click to have Paletteman.com send you your new favorite colors. Webreference: The colorizer Yup, you guessed it--another color selector. This one's Java-based and gives you the most Photoshop-esque interface. Handy, for you hardcore designers out there. Want to specify a
color by RBB or HSB? Great, go ahead. Prefer decimal or percentage values to hex? Knock yourself out. Check out webreference.com/html/tools/colorizer/. Sometimes you have to know the why before you can handle the how. This slickly designed site (webdesignclinic.com/ezine/v1i1/color/index.html) will give you a crash course in color theory, no tuition required. To further communicate the concepts, check out the links to sites that implement the color schemes demonstrated. Nifty! eRetail.net:
Shades of success
Your site's palette is more than just a bunch of pretty colors that look nice together (well, we hope they look nice together...). Depending on the nature of your business and the
audience you're trying to reach, color is a powerful communicator for a variety of concepts and emotions. For example, orange is a bright, cheery color, but it can also grate
on your users' nerves. Can you afford not to read this article? Color Matters
A deeper look at color psychology and usability. This handy and erudite collection of essays illustrates the need to understand the impact of color on the human mind. If color can
suppress your appetite and change your mood, can it make you click a button on a site? More important, did it make you click the right thing? Be sure to check out the photography exhibits for inspiration. HTML Goodies: Color tutorial
If you're tinkering with your own HTML, these four tutorials will help you change the color in tables and text. Tired of
mind-scrambling hex codes? Check out the list of 140 plain English (if Gap-inspired) color names to use, from Cornsilk to PapayaWhip, on htmlgoodies.com/tutors/cc.html.
Hey, not all of the best Web design information is on-line--sometimes you just have to look under your mouse. At a paltry $12.95, this handy, 9-inch mousepad contains all--yes, all--of the color information you're ever likely to need. No more sticky notes all over your monitor and desktop! Now, if only that stupid mouse wasn't in the way...
This is a brief, enlightened little ditty on color theory, wrapped in a colorful package and bedecked with relevant and illustrative graphics. Learn the nuts and bolts of additive vs. subtractive colors, and why you should care.
Though this site is really geared more for print designers (it's published by Tektronix), there's still a treasure trove of information on use of color in professional documents. Get the skinny on working with a limited palette (sound familiar?), quiz yourself on the language of color, and more. Plus, for a site about color printing, it's darn pretty Web design. ZDNet: <devhead>
The front door is overwhelmingly cluttered, but dig a little deeper to see a wealth of information. <devhead> draws on the staggering depth of content from Ziff Davis' computing publishing empire to surface seemingly countless stories, tips and resources in an equally huge number of categories. Start by dipping your toes in, then, if you've got a lot of time to kill, take the plunge. |
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