So, one of our clients is still designing for 800x600. A lot of incredibly smart people still advise doing that - people who are smarter than me at this stuff. They give a number of reasons, but cruddy old hardware is the one that makes the most sense. Or, as my boss put it, "You still never used Vista, right? You and 200 million other people in this country. We don't want to be Vista Part 2!"

OK, I can get behind that. But on the everybody doesn't have the latest and greatest theory, how do you choose which colors to go with? I asked the graphic designers if they shoot for 16 colors, or allow themselves the freedom of using 256, and they laughed me out of the room.

I'm being a little facetious. I don't think many people have a modem, and a video card set to 16 bit or less color mode. But I think a lot of people have lousy monitors. Worse (), some of them have Macs!

I just use whatever color I want. If someone has a monitor from the transistor age, it will render it in some color. And they should be used to that by now.

I prefer the CGA palette over the web-safe color palette. I find it frees me from the paralyzation that comes from having too many options. (Incidentally, if you ever need help choosing a palette, check out http://www.colourlovers.com.)

In all seriousness, I think it's more of a business decision than anything. When does the cost of supporting old technology outweigh the value of it?

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

In all seriousness, I think it's more of a business decision than anything. When does the cost of supporting old technology outweigh the value of it?

Well, I've been trying to get my blog to display at 320x200 pixels to accommodate everybody, but to do that, I have to make the browser about the size of a postage stamp on the screen. I had to buy a magnifying glass.

I design a palette of 3-4 main colors that compliment each other for the main design, and then the text/links which is pretty simple. Dark background=white text, light background= black text, then links and hovers compliment the site colors. Of course, nothing is set in stone, but too many colors make the design too busy.

I make my websites as simple and easy to read as possible. However, I wouldn't cut off my creativity for the sake of old software. If I wanted to put a triple rainbow with vikings crossing it animated in flash, I'd put it and be very sorry for people with old hardware and slow connections. I wouldn't put such a thing on a website, though.

triple rainbow with vikings crossing it animated

Now this would be fun to see (for half a second!)

i use 3 - 4 light and simple colours ! i keep the design professional and simpl!
i love using blue , grey combinations

When I designing a website, I mostly use 4-5 colors that are complimented to each other to make it look more professional and simple.

I mostly use 3-4 color combination