cyberfrem.co.uk
Summary:
- DO use black text on a white background for optimum legibility.
- DON'T use too many colours on a page.
- DO use subtle colours in large areas.
- DO check your pages look okay when rendered with fewer colours.
Elaboration:
- It's worked for printed matter for years!
- For large portions of text you should rely on the traditional black text on a white background. This combination provides the maximum contrast and is easy to read. Most especially, make sure that your text is in a printable colour, ie. not white!
Do not use all the crayons in your box!- Just because you can use a lot of colours to differentiate items does not mean that you should. For a professional appearance it is advisable to restrict yourself to black, white, and up to four other colours.
Avoid headaches!- Use subtle, pastel colours for large areas, eg. backgrounds, as these are easier on the eye and do not detract the viewer from the content. Using highly saturated colours and/or highly detailed images as backgrounds will only drive your visitors away.
Consider your audience.- This is decreasingly relevant nowadays but, whilst the majority of your readers will be displaying at least 16-bit colours, there is a minority out there who are still in 256 colour mode. You may wish to ensure that your site appears okay to these visitors by restricting the predominant colours used to those provided by the 'web-safe palette'. These will be faithfully rendered on the majority of readers' screens. Browsers will attempt to display other colours by 'dithering' a number of these, therefore they may not appear as you expect. If you use only these then you can be quite confident that your colours should appear as intended.