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But hold on 4 characters...

A single ASCII character is minimum 8 bits so 4x8 is 32 bits... assuming the hash is ignored that's still 24 bits.

What have I missed?

A HTML color hex code does not use all available bits in a byte but has a strict format. It's of the form #abc, where # is fixed and abc are hex digits (0-9 A-F), one for R, G, and B. Thus, each channel has 4 bits of precision.

PS: ASCII is a 7-bit encoding. "8 bits minimum" sounds like you are thinking in UTF-8.

Ah thanks, and yes I was.

The author doesn’t understand/communicate-well what a n-bit color palette means, which then confused the rest of us. It refers to the complete size of the palette, in 2^n of course.

She created a 12-entry indexed palette, from the 12-bit (4096) possibilities of short css-hex codes, one nibble per char. (Also single css-hex codes double, so results are brighter than expectations.)

Tldr: This is a 12-entry indexed palette, not a 12-bit one. Neither of which we are constrained to.

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