web-safe color not safe!!! Please help!

They have: 4 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

Hi all, this is my first post and I could use some help.

I'm using a background color of #CCCC99 for a client's site. On my machine, (HP Pavilion notebook- about a year old) the color is a very subtle powder blue, nearly grey.

On my client's machine (Dell, also about a year old) the color is a bright lavendar!!! In fact, on three or four other PCs, it's lavendar as well. We're all checking it out in IE 5.0, at 16 million colors.

What could be happening here?!! I feel as though I have no control over what I'm designing. Please help!

Oh, here's the link: witchyweb.com/test/epc/newepc.html
(it's a one-pager)
what color do you see?

Thanks.

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

Welcome aboard Marple,

I'm sure you'll get lots of help here Laughing out loud

I definately see a lavendar/lilac colour. I would say that perhaps your machine checking if you are the only one to see it the very light blue colour.

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

mairving's picture

They have: 2,256 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

You might try changing the color to something like #99CCFF for a non-lavender blue.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Try checking some other colours - is it just this colour that looks different or do they all? For example, the red used here at TWF looks dark and rich here, but on another computer I was using it looked like more of a bright red.

So, if all or many colours are looking different than they do on your machine, you probably have some sort of colour calibration problem. Now, I don't know where to go from there but hopefully someone else does????

They have: 4 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

Thanks for the quick replies everyone,

Other colors seem to be a bit more consistent- though less saturated on my machine than on others'.

I posted here in the tech forum because I'm guessing that it is a calibration problem (as was suggested), but I don't really know where to begin solving the problem.

I discovered that HP has shut down its user forum- how annoying! They were much more helpful than the companies "several service & support" options. Bah!

Anyway, thanks for taking a look and confirming the lavendar. For now I'll use a different color, but I'd love it if anyone stumbles across a potential answer...

Thanks again.

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