> Each Windows XP icon should contain these three color depths to support different monitor display settings: > 24-bit with 8-bit alpha (32-bit) > 8-bit

> Each Windows XP icon should contain these three color depths to support different monitor display settings: > 24-bit with 8-bit alpha (32-bit) > 8-bit (256 colors) with 1-bit transparency > 4-bit (16 colors) with 1-bit transparency This has been bugging me for a few years: when (and why) did we switch from measuring color depth as a total of all channels to measuring color depth as a single channel? When people talk about image and video formats today, "8-bit" means 8 bits per channel (presumably meaning 32 bits per pixel), not 256 colors total.