Web safe colors

[cooper]

On the other hand, it would seem that those 2% would be used to seeing ugly colors on websites they visit.

In which case they will like yours all the more if you've made yours look good.
:o)

Some companies make a decent income just picking up the leftover customers from the big players' inability to service everyone effectively. If a large company leaves out a feature or product that a small company picks up, that small company fills a niche and creates a following. It happens all the time.

[ronniethedodger]

Also keep in mind that some PDA's and cell phones that can view your site may not have all the color capabilities of your desktop/laptop users.

That may be true, but then you would also have to design for their screen resolution as well. You are not suggesting we do that as well are you.

I think in the case of PDA's they are either running WinCE or they are a PalmTop and PalmTops are not usually in color (or it used to be that way).

Some companies make a decent income just picking up the leftover customers from the big players' inability to service everyone effectively. If a large company leaves out a feature or product that a small company picks up, that small company fills a niche and creates a following. It happens all the time.

That is a very good point Cooper. Taking the time to build your pages for not only the color issue, but browser issues as well will get you more in the long run. You just need to get into that mindset and stick with it. If you are lazy or do not care, then you are going to get what you put into it....less.

But truth be known I am not concerned about using Web Safe colors for the reasons you would think. I use the Web Safe in my graphics as much as possible because they compress much more than 65k depth and therefore saves my visitors the load time. I am more concerned with dial-up issues in other words, more the the color issue. The colors are an added side-benefit. ;0)

[Andilinks]

My 2 cents:
I say it is a matter of knowing your market and allocating scarce resources.

How much of my time should I spend chasing the least affluent 2% of my market?

If I were selling a high ticket item, not much. If my sales pitch is appealing to micropayments from college students or PDA users, then I'd spend more time on those low-end details.

For me, going for the 98% of the 100 million who have yet to see my site makes more sense than spending time designing for 2% who can't afford to upgrade.

The 100 million is an expanding market, while the 100,000 is a shrinking one. Seems like an easy decision...

If I have five hours to design a page, I think I should spend 98% of that time designing for the more affluent 98%.

Assuming of course that my object is profit, if my object is art then it's different. :)

Andi

[ronniethedodger]

Andi,

"Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."
- Alexander Pope

Profound words...I can see how they would apply to this situation also.

[hminney]

Some great thoughts - the crux of the above arguments seem to hinge around
* the people I want to communicate with have high end systems anyway
* whereas it doesn't take too much effort to make sure that your high end colourscheme doesn't actually clash with legacy (or in the case of mobile phones, low colour depth) browsers

I'm approaching this from a different angle. I've set up a diary site (like blogs but with photos and backgrounds) at www.wdiary.net (feel free to add a story of your own). Users can enter <font color="blue"> to change the color of the text in their diary - this is easier than remembering a list of color numbers since I've designed the site to be used from an internet cafe in Venezuela (there are internet cafes in Venezuela aren't there?).

Horses for courses - design your site how you like but keep asking the question "should I do this? Is this appropriate to my audience? Who is my most 'profitable' audience anyway?"

Hugo
(Actually I've just seen how WebProWorld changes color, might use this method because it looks a good way!)

[Andilinks]

I do find it rather peculiar that ronnie quotes my sig and then gets credit on Page One for it. No hard feelings for ronnie of course or any hard feelings at all.

Alexander Pope was a wonderful poet and penned such lines as "fools rush in.." and "a little learning is a dangerous thing..." I strongly recommend Googling Alexander Pope, not to mention reading. :)

Someone who selects the "quote of the day" here at wpw is just a bit clueless though.

I emailed this complaint first and am only now going public with it having gotten no response.

Andi

[wenwilder]

More than likely... the reason Ronnie was credited for the quote... was because it was NOT in his sig line.

Being a fan of Alexander Pope I would assume you would also know one of his more famous quotes: To err is human, to forgive divine. But then, ... I could be mistaken.

[Andilinks]

Ok, not a problem... " To err is human, to forgive divine" from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.

I make no claim to divinity--at least not today. :)

Andi

[ronniethedodger]

I really must apologize for that Andi ... do you forgive me? ;0)

It is not unusual for one of my passages to make it onto page one from time to time. What irks me is that they often are out of context and give a different impression when not viewed in the total picture of why I was saying it.

For instance, I was quoted once as saying "Search engine results are like septic tanks, the really big chunks float to the top" or something along those lines. But that was in response to the current converstation about spamming the SE's. In fact...the paragraph prior to that quote actually had the context of why the statement was made. The quote on Page One looked more like a blanket statement about all SE's and all results in general.

In this particular case it was aimed at you Andi in regards to the comments you had made prior to my post. I was looking at what you were saying in your post, and saw the quote in your sigline right below it which was in complete contradiction to your remarks in that post. It was a subtle statement that I thought you would understand and pick up on. Instead it was picked up for the Quote of the Day and in my opinion (also) should not really have been there. It is also unfortunate that most of my quotes get inserted on a Friday ... which means this one rode it out thru the weekend too. ;0)

[Andilinks]

No hard feelings for ronnie of course or any hard feelings at all.

That's what I said in the earlier post and absolutely meant it. It is a well-deserved homage to Pope to see it on the front page like that, and a bit petty of me to claim any piece of the credit.

But I have been using that quote as my sig for many months on a few other forums so it was just a little jarring to see it there.

I also understand the frustrations of being quoted out of context as well, as would Alexander Pope if he were around. :)

...do you forgive me? ;0)

The error wasn't even yours, but if it makes you feel better, yes I do.

Brittany and I have exchanged emails on this already as well so I'd say everything is all smoothed over... Wait, brb, I'll go look for an apt quote from Pope.

"Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind."
The Odyssey of Homer. Book xv. Line 433

via Bartlett, about.com, and of course Google...

Andi