color magic :: variant HTML 4.01 Transitional

This is a page full of deprecated html-code and invalid colornames! *)

The deprecated codes are masked by the Doctype "HTML 4.01 Transitional", so the HTML-validator doesn't give errors or warnings. **)
The css-validator is also giving Congratulations! No Errors Found; logical: for the errors are in the html, not in the css.

But all 54 in the html given colornames for text and background colors are invalid colornames: they don't exist as colornames; see the list of valid color names over here.
In spite of this all browsers ***) are showing phantasy colors for the non-existing colornames:

table header
row 1, cel 1	row 1, cel 2	row 1, cel 3
row 2, cel 1	row 2, cel 2	row 2, cel 3

table header

row 1, cel 1

row 1, cel 2

row 1, cel 3

row 2, cel 1

row 2, cel 2

row 2, cel 3

This phenomenon is playing when using the attributes bgcolor="..." and text="..." in the <body> tag.

This phenomenon is playing when using the attribute bgcolor="..." in the table tags <table>, <tr>, <td> and <th>.

This phenomenon is playing when using the attribute color="..." in a <font> tag.

This phenomenon is playing in the <body> attributes link="...", alink="..." and vlink="...", except in Chrome and Safari (see below).

This phenomenon is playing independent of the used doctype.

<body bgcolor="ffffancy" text="fresh young yellow" link="batman" alink="workinghero" vlink="long ago">

		...

		<h3><font color="redgreen">variant HTML 4.01 Transitional</font></h3>

		...

		<table bgcolor="oops-no-valid-colorname" cellpadding="5" summary="">

 
   <tr bgcolor="nothing">

   
      <th colspan="3"><h3><font color="greenred">table header</font></h3></th>

 
   </tr>

 
   <tr bgcolor="redgreen">

   
      <td><font color="equator">row 1, cel 1</font></td>

   
      <td bgcolor="miracle"><font color="Hawaii">row 1, cel 2</font></td>

   
      <td>row 1, cel 3</td>

 
   </tr>

 
   <tr bgcolor="fresh young yellow">

   
      <td><font color="~Grey~">row 2, cel 1</font></td>

   
      <td bgcolor="bg-color"><font color="beautiful">row 2, cel 2</font></td>

   
      <td><font color="redgreen">row 2, cel 3</font></td>

 
   </tr>

</TABLE>

Browser differences in the link colors:

For unvisited links, Chrome and Safari don't show the given colorname link="batman" (which is ███ in other browsers),
but are using their default link color: blue ███.

If pressing down the mouse without clicking, Chrome and Safari don't show the given colorname alink="workinghero" for an active link (which is ███ in other browsers),
but are using their default active link color: red ███.

After return from a clicked other page, Chrome and Safari don't show the given colorname vlink="long ago" for a visited link (which is ███ in other browsers),
but are using their default visited link color: dark purple ███.

______________
*) The main code is coming from a W3C deprecated example in the official html 4.01 specification of december 1999.
Added is a table with also deprecated codes in it.

**) HTML-Tidy in Firefox is certainly aware of the shortage: a warning for 54 invalid color values. :-)

***) Firefox 23/25, Chrome 30, Opera 12/17, Safari-Win (5.1.7) and Internet Explorer 7 and 10; all on desktop/laptop under Windows.
IE8 and IE9 look good in Netrenderer.

Never ever use this in a real life web page!