Hexadecimal and Color Basics
In a web browser, you have at your disposal many system colors. Each color is identified by its Red- Green- Blue (RGB) values, three numbers that range from 0 to 255, each of which represents the intensity of the Red, Green, or Blue component of the desired color. Maximum values of all three (R=255, G=255, B=255) produce the color white and minimal values (R=0, G=0, B=0) produce black. All other colors are represented by different RGB triplets.
Here is the tricky part: Rather than identifying a color as something like "102,153,255" each number is converted from base 10 (ten normal numbers from 0-9) to hexadecimal, base 16 (sixteen digits from 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F).
Hexadecimal is more easily and more efficiently understood by computers. So for the color example above, we would write in hexadecimal as 6699FF. In this example, "66" is the Red value, "99" the Green, and "FF"the Blue.
Here are some hexadecimal examples of different colors:
| Color | Hex Code | Color | Hex Code | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xx oo xx | FFCCCC | xx oo xx | 3300FF | |
| xx oo xx | 33FF66 | xx oo xx | AA0000 | |
| xx oo xx | 663300 | xx oo xx | 9900FF | |
| xx oo xx | 000077 | xx oo xx | FFFF00 | |
| xx oo xx | EEEEEE | xx oo xx | 888888 | |
| xx oo xx | 444444 | xx oo xx | 000000 | |
Now, don't panic about having to do a bunch of numerical conversions! There are many tools that will let you click on a color and they will provide the hexadecimal representation. You might try opening up Fireworks, and experimenting with the mixer, or use this online Colorlab tool. Also, most browsers support standard shorthand for these 16 colors: |
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| Color | Name | Color | Name | |
| xx oo xx | aqua | xx oo xx | black | |
| xx oo xx | blue | xx oo xx | fuchsia | |
| xx oo xx | gray | xx oo xx | green | |
| xx oo xx | lime | xx oo xx | maroon | |
| xx oo xx | navy | xx oo xx | olive | |
| xx oo xx | purple | xx oo xx | red | |
| xx oo xx | silver | xx oo xx | teal | |
| xx oo xx | white | xx oo xx | yellow | |