When creating pages for viewing via the Internet and coloured Text or Backgrounds are included, consideration must be given to the many millions of viewers (surfers?) that could eventually find their way to the site that you have published. There is no way of knowing what type of video card and how many colours the visitors Computers/Browsers are able to show. Today are still many 16 colour VGA and 256 colour SVGA computers in use around the world both private and corporate.

If we select colours that we like but other computers don't, then our pages may appear quite differently to what we see when creating them. Some colours may appear as another colour all together, and others may appear with an unsightly dithered pattern. To mostly! overcome this a selection can be made from the VGA palette of 16 colours or the palette of 256 colours (actually 216 plus a few for HTML objects). The 256 palette is particularly useful for bitmap images where file size is of utmost importance for telephone line transmission.

If your video driver allows mode changes between thousands of colours and 256 (8bit) colours, switch to 8bit mode regularly to check the appearance of your pages and, just as important, at least view your pages in both MS Internet Explorer 3+ AND Netscape Navigator 3+. It is surprising and often frustrating to see the difference between them. This also applies to the way Bitmaps and Tables appear. Generally MS IE produces the smoothest images and tidiest tables. Java buttons were used on this site and if coloured with anything other than the base 16 colours, the results were erratic when viewed with Netscape while MS Internet Explorer had no problems with them at all. I use the versions-3 of each to check the current HTML 3.2 standards. If you are prepared for a headache, also try earlier versions to check your work.

If Netscape had stuck with HTML 2 until HTML 3.0 was either ratified or rejected as a standard (it was rejected), we may not have quite so many problems. It is my experience that Netscape also re-dithers? most bitmap images when using 256 colour video.

We have the ability to choose a pattern when creating 256 colour bitmaps from RGB scans etc., however if a Browser dithers HTML object colours then the results are unpredictable, especially on type, often making the page look flat if not hard to read. (You can view the preferred 216+ colours with Hexadecimal colour values, download a reference image and link to a chart with RGB values. The tables are quite large, so be patient if your connection is slow.)

GIF
When an image is saved as a .GIF or the newer .PNG file type, the export filters ascertain the number of colours in the image and only save information, and a palette, for those colours. Therefore a .GIF image can contain only a few colours making the file very small (compared to image data containing a palette of all 256 colours, sometimes referred to as an Indexed colour palette), a very important consideration for faster transmission via the Web. Most bitmap image types contain a colour palette as well as the actual pixel data.

JPG jpeg
To save a picture as a .JPG file type, the image should be an RGB image. The beauty, and ugliness!, of this file type is that export filters contain an algorithm that can compress the data far more than most compressible types. However a little bit of practice is in order if you wish to use this type because improperly handled (the compression rate is user variable), the results can be downright ugly. The compression method is referred to as lossy - every time you open and save the file, image data is lost.

Remember - Trial every .JPG file before you finish work on the original. Often a .GIF or .PNG will be smaller in size compared to a .JPG of equal visual quality.

(The newer .PNG file type is not yet accepted by many Browsers and painting packages. It is a file type of the future, similar to .GIF with transparency options etc., created in direct competition with the .GIF type because of the possibility - a warning given to the industry - that the owner of the .GIF patent may charge for the use of all!!! .GIF type pictures.)