h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Figuring out the combinations is easy if you use BBEdit. Simply click on the colour in the Web Safe Colour Palette and drop it into your HTML.

(-:

From Distant Shores

And where do we get BBEdit from? And how much does it cost?

You can get the Lite version for free at this address http://www.barebones.com/free/bbedit_lite.html

It only works on Mac...

But isn't it nice to have an idea of how it works?

Absolutely. The more we understand about what we're doing, the better we do it. In IT, and particularly in internet technologies, it is all too easy to learn how to do something without having much, if any, understanding of how it actually works.

This is just as true of the artistic element of the internet as it is of the IT element. I think that Leonardo DaVinci hit the nail on the head when he said "Study the Art of Science and the Science of Art".

But once you understand, a good tool is a great help.

(-:

From Distant Shores

Too right.

At one point when I was messing around with html, the colour codes clicked and I could just type the colour I wanted pretty well in hex... alas this ability has gone from me but I'm hopeful with practice it'll come back...

Yes, BBEdit is extremely useful for coding colors for web pages (if you're working on a Mac).

Also, Photoshop 5.5 has a nice trick with the color wheel so you can have it only display web safe colors, which is very useful when designing graphics for the web. Also, you can type in a hex code for the color you want (like #000066 for goo blue). And, when you 'save for web' you can pass the cursor over the image and see the hex codes for each color to make sure it remained true after your manipulation, and even replace a color at that point to perfectly match a background.

While there are plenty of these around, for those who want to see all the web safe colors, I have a chart at http://www.arts.ilstu.edu/~guither/webtricks/colorchart.html

Nice article, Lil!