What does the HTML color “snow” try to accomplish?
How does it differ from “white” in visual terms?
white: #ffffff;
snow: #fffafa;
no comment
In the wrong thread?
Re-read the OP…
No, think in “code think” if that makes any sense.
(in this case, the “language” is “red, green, blue bytes”)
Be thankful it isn’t snow: #ffff00 
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Try this link, it tells you more about “snow” than you ever wanted to know!
http://www.color-hex.com/color/fffafa
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“I was once Snow White. But I drifted” – Mae West
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We’re all being kind of dense today I see…
I use it because it is easy to type rather than white, #fff, etc.
Edit
How does it differ from “white” in visual terms?
My poor eyesight cannot detect any difference even with @ralplm’s example 
That’s because we’re trying to deal with a silly question to begin with. Obviously White and Snow White are different, otherwise you wouldn’t be comparing them. What do they accomplish? Two different colors. What does Red and Light Red accomplish? Two different colors. What about Salmon and Pink? Two different colors.
To make this more apparent, lets look at the RGB values of white, rgb(255,255,255), versus snow white, rgb(255,250,250).
The Green and Blue values differ by 5 units, I’m using units because albeit, theses are whole number values, but if you look at the hex for white, #FFFFFF, and snow white, #FFFAFA, you see the difference is not suprisingly 5 units in that case too (if you know how hex gets calculated, this makes sense).
So what does it accomplish? A less bright white, as white is the brightest value supported, and anything less than #FFFFFF is by definition less bright. And this happens in multiple positions in the color scale, so not everyhing is compared to #FFFFFF, the reds would be compared to #FF0000, and the blues to #0000FF, etc. Pinks would be compared to even yet a different hex (probably, Fuchsia or #FF00FF).
So yes, there is a difference, but you know that, and now you know it is simply less bright than white by 5 units of green and 5 units of blue.
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For the short version: Snow is a very light pastel pink, where as white is white.
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Well this is an ‘art’ or aesthtic question, more that it is a coding question.
programmatically, as has been said many times, ‘white’ = #fff ,‘snow’ = #fffafa ( and Mittineage whimsically provided us with ‘yellow snow’=#ffff00; that was a joke… there is no actual preset called ‘yellow snow’)
As to what it accomplishes, it just an aesthetic choice; useful, perhaps , if you need an ever so slightly dimmer white. Essentially providing you a similar breadth of color choices as if you were trying to paint a room and deciding between “egg shell” and “mother of pearl”… they are whites but different TONES of white.
The usefulness of this ever so diminutive changes in tone will depend on how skilled you are/can be at selecting other hues to offset , compliment , and contrast your original color choice ( as well as the aesthetic sensibilities of your audience; such a subtle palette range, for example, would most likely be lost/wasted on young children)
hope that helps
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I stopped reading after your sarcastic intro… yawn
Thanks for your take, Sam.
Hey, another person who can avoid sarcasm (and read).
So it sounds like “snow white” is a less bright white. Maybe similar to “satin white” paint versus “bright white” paint?
in concept, yes. I say this because I don’t want you to take color matching too literally. Keep in mind the web color gamut is far narrower than anything in RGB or print.
And much less so than what our eyes are capable of detecting
Maybe your eyes.
It might be my monitor, it might be my eyes, likely a combination of both. But I see no discernible difference between the two in Ralph’s example in post #5
I guess snow is ~1.3% less white than white, being a bit stronger in red, but I’m not seeing it
I can see the pink tinge only when the colors are side-by-side. I just find it laughable because I’ve never seen pink snow. Bluish, yes, but not pink. “Snow”… what a name. This conversation reminds me of “gray” and “darkgray”. They’re just words that might or might not reflect the color.
In real life, we rarely consider the way the brain interprets colors various settings and are sometimes fooled
http://brainden.com/color-illusions.htm