Probs with background color

[alan_j at supvax.sls.co.uk]

Joe,

The problem your user has is the very same one I am just trying to solve. It is
caused when a background colour meant for display on a high colour screen
driver (eg 64 k colours) is displayed on a screen with fewer colours (eg 16).
What happens is the PC picks the nearest colour it has in its palette and
attempts to shade it to make it more like the original - it always fails! The
result is that some pattern of dots overlays the text, often making it
unreadable.

There are three solutions:

1. make sure your users have adequate colour drivers (probably unreasonable!)
2. abandon what is, after all, a Netscape-specific facility
3. pick a background colour that will display on 16 colour monitors.

The problem with option 3 is finding a suitable, 6 digit 'colour 
number' (made up of three hex numbers representing shades of red, green and 
blue) which will display on 16 colours without being too strong. Trial and
error (probably how most of us work) is not a good option! 

Can anyone out there suggest where I/we might find some explanatory text on
this subject?

Alan Jackson