I know at some point it was very important to use websafe colors, especially in backgrounds of graphics, etc but is this still the case with the coding on newer browsers like IE7 and FF3?
All colors have a hexidecimal code. Not all of them are websafe and should you open the average random purple in Photoshop you can often see just how far off the suggested "websafe" color would be. If you know how hex codes are coded you can further see just how far a perfect shade of purple and the "websafe" shade would be.Using the hex is always the easiest option.