I have web pages which worked fine with their colors until perhaps 1-2 year ago (www.tuomasvirtanen.fi). Then happened a change which is demonstrated as a change in the darkness of the gray image elements in the pages, mostly in Safari which, to my knowledge, can read color profiles. The pages have a basic gray background, originally #9a9a9a, and they contain image elements, such as the title of the image series, and other components, which I liked to be embedded in the coded color. So, initially, in the gray background, the gray background color of the image elements was the same as the coded color: only the text of the image elements popped out in pages. The problem is, as you already have figured out, that the background gray of the image elements is not anymore the same as the browser-coded gray. I've read, for example, this thread (http://forums.adobe.com/message/4809745#4809745) but I do not find there an answer.
What I've done is the following: I converted the original file with the AdobeRGB color space to sRGB in PS6. In this conversion, the background gray of an image element (#9a9a9a) changed to another (#9b9b9b). Then I saved this file as a CompuserveGIF which kept the color the same (#9b9b9b), as measured by the Eyedropper tool in PS6. I duplicated the file, put it in the site and looked the result: again Safari shows a clear color difference between the image element (with #9b9b9b) and the coded color (with #9b9b9b). In Firefox, no problem.
So, I do not understand why the background color in the image element (#9b9b9b in the gif file, as measured by Eyedropper) shows a well recognizable difference in Safari with the the exactly the same color. Basically, I just liked to know how I need to convert an AdobeRGB file so that a browser's (Safari) gray is the same as the color the image element.