However, as any web designer will tell you, there are colours and then there are colours. It’s all black and white you see – but not really. White and black are not generally known as black after all [yes, yes, I know black and white are not colours but that's not the issue]. The point is, white becomes #ffffff and black becomes #000000 and everything colour-wise works from these junctures.

And as you delve deeper into colours and you work with them daily in code, you start to see colours in a different light again. RGB and Hex values slowly take over. You see a red car, but actually, you think to yourself, well, it’s not exactly red in the true sense at all – it is actually #a70909 with perhaps a hint of #be1212 in the sunlight. And you spot a great looking old wall with shades and cracks and it instantly appeals. Is if off-white, cream, grey [gray] in places, and that patch in the corner must be brown? But again, the colours just do not add up and your mind shifts into code mode again with flashes of #FEDCDC, #CCC4C4 and perhaps a dash of #602E1C.

Most graphics programs show you these codes when you choose a colour and even if you do not have a graphics program that does this, there are literally hundreds of places online [that's www or Net for some] where you can easily find the codes anyway.

So, here’s a few resources on offer…

Online

Do’s and Dont’s
A good article about choosing your colours using a colour wheel

ColorSpire
An excellent colour picker and a whole lot more. Fantastic tool. Thanks to Kevin for pointing this out!

Name That Colour
Contains hex code, RGB and a very nifty addition, the actual name of the colour as well.

Colour Name and Hue
With this little tool you can either enter RGB (Red-Green-Blue) values, HSB (Hue-Saturation-Brightness) numbers or a hexadecimal code for a color, to find its closest match of a named color and its corresponding hue. It is also possible to just use the sliders to see how color hues are changing. The list of colors comprises 1640 different color names extracted from several sources on the web.

HTML Color Name
A table that provides a list of the color names that are supported by all major browsers.

Photoshop-like JavaScript Color Picker
This color picker mimics Photoshop color picker by layering transparent images.

4096 Colour Wheel
Simple but very good. Hovering over a colour shows three varying hues and coliurs side by side. Nice for gradient work.

Colour Scheme Generator
Another wheel and gradient colour picker.

Colour Scheme Randomizer
Spin the color wheel and get a selection of three random colors. The color wheel randomizes among some 16 million colors. And since each spin produces three different colors, that gives endless combinations. (or 2 to the power of 70 or so, which is a very large number). Enough to keep anyone busy for a while.

Interactive Colour Wheel
Experiment with saturation, intensity, hue, and luma.

Accessibility Color Wheel
If accessibility is your focus, this one is for you. Even includes Deuteranope, Protanope and Tritanope settings. If you are not sure what that means, take a look at this colour picker – it includes explainations for the less intelligent, such as myself.

Colour Schemer
Gives a nice options for creating a colour scheme with 16 matching colours. Simple but effective.

Interactive Colour Scheme Chooser
You can use this interactive application to choose colors for sections of your Web pages [doh!]

Colour Theory Visualizer
Contains a lot of nice features, including the possibility to change the background so you can see how colours work on white and back. Even has an OSX widget for those who are Mac-oriented.

As mentioned above, there are hundreds, if not thousands available on the Net. Try a Google search for more.

Free, Downloadable Programs

ColorPicker
The significant difference between this tool and any of those highlighted above, is that this tool allows you to fin the colour of anything on your screen. And if you have ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It’s impossible. That’s why this color picker has a magnifier attached. Grab palettes of up to 16 colors at once and use four advanced color mixers to select a spectrum of possibilities. An excellent tool!

Anry Colour Picker
Free color picker and color mixing tool features five formats of picked color value (HTML, RGB, HEX, HSB/HSV, HSL), 3x/9x zoom of any screen area, saving picked color history, RGB and RYB color wheels, two harmonious color finders and RGB color mixer. Supported platforms: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003. No installation required.

ColorSchemer ColorPix
ColorPix is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats. You can use the built-in magnifier to zoom in on your screen, click on a color value to copy it directly to the clipboard, and even keep ColorPix on top of all other apps and out of the way.

In Your Browser

ColorZilla for Firefox
With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. I use this one extensively and find it to be one of my most used Firefox addons.

Not being a Mac or Linux user myself, I do not wish to suggest what programs or addons are the best to use. I just wish Internet Explorer had an addon such as those described above, but to date, I am not aware of any that exist.

And why do I choose G-Mail? Basically, it works. It rarely has any downtime, it is so easy to set up and use and it’s quick, reliable and does everything I want. The fact it is web-based has obvious benefits in that it is accessible from any location with an Internet connection and it has all the functionality and features that I need.

The ‘but’ though comes from my personal wish to set up an email account in my own fashion. Functionality is excellent and so is the ability to use it as your base email portal – by directing all other email accounts to this one location. The one downside in my opinion is that it offers little in terms of personal design. We all have our little hang-ups about font size, colours and shading, and G-Mail is not hot in this department. Sheesh, even Outlook has a few colours and themes to satisfy most tastes.

All is not lost though. For users of Firefox and the myriad of addons at your fingertips, there is G-Mail Skins, which I have used and it looks great. The only trouble is it seems to just drop off on occasion and right this munute it just will not work at all [for me anyway]. There is an issue with the language setup it seems, but you can chase that up if you so desire.

An alternative to GMail Skins is G-Mail Redesigned and personally I like this much better. The skins/themes are are very professional in ‘feel’ and very simple to install. You will need to install the Stylish addon [another great tool] and it is then a simple matter of loading your skin.

And if you are looking for some other really handy ideas and ways of getting the most from your G-Mail account, take a look through the links below.

http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/gmail-tips-and-tricks-monster-roundup-198488.php

There are many more sites but these two will give you enough to do for a full day anyway…

Car manufacturers make cars with bio-fuel options, different colours, and cater for people of all sizes with seat controls, safety belt adjustments and so on.
TV channels know that what appeals to one will not appeal to another.

Common sense stuff you would think and yet wannabe web designers cannot see beyond the scope of their noses.

Anyway, for those people who do actually want to make their websites work in most browsers and try and reach a bigger audience with a stable design across all platforms, Browsershots is an excellent tool for use in this aim.

From the maker of Browsershots:

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser.