By Lynda Weinman
The Browser Safe palette, as I so named it, is the actual palette that Mosaic, Netscape and Internet Explorer use within their browsers. The palettes used by these browsers are slightly different on Macs and PCs. This palette is based on math, not beauty. I didn't and wouldn't have picked the colors in this palette, but Netscape, Mosaic and Internet Explorer did, so...
The Browser Safe Palettes only contain 216 colors out of a possible 256. That is because the remaining 40 colors vary on Macs and PCs. By eliminating the 40 variable colors, this palette is optimized for cross-platform use.
The Browser Safe Palette should not be used to remap color photographs. It is better to use an adaptive palette (with no dithering,if possible) and let the end-browser do any additional dithering. I have a test page which proves this point. The Browser Safe Palette is useful for flat-color illustrations, logos with flat-color, and areas in any image that have a lot of a single color. When a browser dithers flat colors it looks far more objectionable than when it dithers photographs.