HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
So, as those extended color keywords were introduced in CSS Level 3, does that mean they won't work
in older browsers that don't support CSS3? Not quite. This is one of those times when CSS3 was updated to match
what was already being implemented by browsers. The extended colors, known as
X11 colors,
are originally from
another browser technology—SVG. SVG has been supported in browsers for many years, and because of that, so too
have most of the extended colors. I say “most” because you may find some browsers don't support all 146 extended
colors.
Having 162 colors isn't that breathtaking, is it? The web would be a boring-looking place if you had access to only
that many colors.
What if you're creating a website for somebody else and she asks you for “a color similar to hot pink, except not
quite hot pink, more like a dark strawberry color, except closer to a raspberry red”? First, I sympathize with you! Se-
cond, no, that's not a color keyword, but with the possibility to use more than 16 million colors, you'll be glad to
hear that there are not 16 million color keywords.
Color Values
You can also use other color values and functions to access more than 16 million colors; they are RGB and HSL.
RGB (Hexadecimal)
RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, and in its hexadecimal (hex for short) form, it consists of a hash or pound symbol
(
#)
, followed by either three (RGB) or six (RRGGBB) hexadecimal characters. Hexadecimal characters are 0-9 and
A-F.
Project Files Update (ch04-00): If you haven't followed the previous instructions and are comfortable working from
here onward or would like to reference the project files up to this point, you can download them from
I mentioned previously that you should make a background color closely match the background image. The gray col-
or you applied earlier looks a lot darker than the gray (as shown in Figure 4-1) of the background image though,
right?
