Re:Ask Slashdot (Score 1)

Color choice has a lot to do with the emotions associated with them, i.e. green evokes nature, dark blue evokes conservative authority (look at most banks) and bright colors evoke excitement. You want the site to 'feel' right.

Second, good color choices enhance readability and UI. Good contrast of text against the background, using color breaks to indicate significantly different content, consistent coloring of UI elements, etc. all combine to make a site more useful and intuitive.

Thirdly, the Web Safe Palette - a technical limitation of 8-bit video and Netscape. Many .gif graphics dither unless the pixel falls into a certain (EXTREMELY limited) palette of colors, defined by the intersection of the 8-bit system palettes of Windows and Mac computers. The full drift -- and the fascinating color theory behind it -- can be found at http://www.lynda.com.

Have fun. It's a royal pain in the ass. Lucky for us designers, 32-bit color is getting fairly common.

- aka Snowman