6 ms·
Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- captn3m0 11y ago- Eric Meyer wrote about it: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/ http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/ The purple is actually quite vibrant: http://www.color-hex.com/color/663399 http://www.color-hex.com/color/663399
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ddoolin 11y agoOut of curiosity: Are there any other semantically unrelated color names in the spec?
- scarmig 11y agoaliceblue, though that was a pre-existing color. Here's a full list: http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/color.html http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/color.html
- ddoolin 11y agoThanks! (Ecaron's parent comment to an older HN thread also had some comments that named a few) `dodgerblue` and `aliceblue` are pretty damning...I don't see much reason rebeccapurple shouldn't be added at that point. I guess there's the argument of not personalizing the content more than it already is.
- userbinator 11y agoI guess there's the argument of not personalizing the content more than it already is. There's also the argument of how much utility all these colour names actually have - if you did a survey of the colours specified in the CSS of all sites on the Internet, I bet a huge proportion of the ones that use colour names are the common ones like "black", "white", "red", "green", etc.; and the rest are specified in hex. All these other seldom-used names just take up space in every single piece of software that wants to claim compliance with CSS4 standard. Especially with the development of CSS preprocessors, it feels to me like hex colours would suffice; and perhaps the primary and secondary colours.
- loganfsmyth 11y agoI see an "aliceblue". No idea if there is a history behind it. http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-color/#named-colors http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-color/#named-colors
- talmand 11y agoAliceBlue, named for Roosevelt's daughter that started the color trend in fashion. There's also Peru, but I'm not sure what that's about.
- ddoolin 11y agoI'd definitely be interested to learn the story behind `peru` since it doesn't seem to be related to the most obvious choice (the flag(s))
- superobserver 11y agoNot as cool as cosmic latte. :)
- rburhum 11y agoAs a peruvian, that brown color can only mean two things; the beautiful color of the Andes, or the shitty state of peruvian politics. Either way, I am cool with it.
- rburhum 11y agoOK, jokes on the side, although I really don't know for sure the source, I would say that brown color is very typical in Peru. - You can see it in the Andes mountains: http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/8000/8924/ISS017-E-7322_lrg.jpg http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/8000/8924/... http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Photography/Images/POD/a/andes-mountains-haas-1110869-sw.jpg http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Sh... - You can see it in the clay that is used for rooftops: http://curanderos.ru/peru/18374000.jpg http://curanderos.ru/peru/18374000.jpg - The color of the salt mines: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/maras-salt-mines-peruvian-andes-cuzco-peru-july-woman-working-july-34963697.jpg http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/maras-salt-mines-peruvian-and... - In the huge amount of peruvian clay pottery: https://www.google.com/search?q=peruvian+andes&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=1318&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=NTZaVeiXBc_doASFuoLABg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&dpr=1#tbm=isch&q=peruvian+clay+pottery&spell=1 https://www.google.com/search?q=peruvian+andes&espv=2&biw=12... * Un the die for the textiles: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/63/9b/34/639b3446882bf509ff2f7657a946c2e7.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/63/9b/34/639b34468... * Even in natural disasters when the river flows out ("huaycos") and destroys roads: http://cde.publimetro.e3.pe/ima/0/0/0/1/7/17391.jpg http://cde.publimetro.e3.pe/ima/0/0/0/1/7/17391.jpg Surprised there is a peruvian brown - but it makes sense to me :)
- 91bananas 11y agoNot semantically unrelated, but my personal favorite is "tomato"
- ecaron 11y agoLonger conversation on this from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677
- 91bananas 11y agoEric's writings about his daughter, his family, himself through it all, are intense to read through. Glad the community was able and willing to push this through so quickly as a sign of respect to her.
- nathannecro 11y agoI just want to point to a post by Eric which essentially captures what it's like to hear that a loved one is chronically sick. http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2013/08/19/77-hours/ http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2013/08/19/77-hours/
- cbd1984 11y agoOne way around the implied slippery slope is to impose a time limit: If anyone still wants this in after twenty years, it goes in, but not before. Yes, it's arbitrary. These are color names. They're inherently arbitrary. If there's no limit, our list of CSS colors will become a list of dead people, which is nice and all but isn't useful for the task of assigning human-meaningful names to points on the color spectrum. Let's see, was this dead kid bluer or redder than that dead kid...
- schwabacher 11y agothere is a limit of 16^6 24 bit colors
- cbd1984 11y agoSo if this becomes a thing, there are people who will be left out, simply because either the community arbitrarily says "No" just like it arbitrarily said "Yes" in the past, or because there's no more room in the spec. Either way is a recipe for bad blood. "Rough consensus and running code" is a powerful methodology for low-overhead development right up until it means everyone gets all emotional over what a color is named and whether there are too many memorials in something originally designed to be simple and useful. Say what you will about bureaucracy, it at least enforces a certain emotional distance when people are bound by rules and can legitimately say that their refusal is nothing personal.
- a3n 11y ago"Either way is a recipe for bad blood." In this case, that sounds like an attempt at premature social optimization. It's a nice gesture. If it becomes a problem we'll deal with it.
- 20150518 11y agoThat thinking will not get you far here with the HN circlejerk, hehe. But I agree with you. IMO that kind of thing shouldn't go through. It is absolutely NOT relevant to the field at hand, I wasn't aware of Meyers existence until this came up, let alone his daughter. He was not, at all, someone that you would deem crucial for the development of CSS. Meyer was the one that proposed this (not the community), and IIRC, made it up merely hours around the decease of his girl. I'm sorry if I sound negative but that is the truth. If y'all guys like him because he's (or you enjoy to imagine that he's) your friend it's ok, but it's not mine and all of this, from an unbiased point of view, is nonsense. I'm still yet to hear a solid reason on to why this is OK, other than 'just compassion man'.
- calvin 11y agoYou can check to see if your browser has the color: http://output.jsbin.com/derewavufu/1 http://output.jsbin.com/derewavufu/1 Look for purple background. Firefox 38 and Chrome 42 have it.
- toxican 11y agoI understand the arguments against this, but I don't think I've ever met a web developer that actually still uses the color names. I saw it often in 2007 or so, but not at all anymore. So I'm left not really caring about a slippery slope of names appearing in a list of things nobody uses. And I should say that despite color names not really being used, it's still a very nice gesture.
- patja 11y agoThey are a nice transitional crutch for students just getting started. I teach html, css, and javascript to 13 year olds using Adobe Brackets. The color name code completion is a big assist early on when introducing the basics of CSS before getting into the more daunting hex codes or RGBA values.
- toxican 11y agoAgreed. That's the last time that I used them. Then I branched into #ffffff, #000000, learned how the shorthand hex codes worked, etc. They don't really have a place in a professional environment though, so adding a new on as a tribute doesn't really harm anything at all, imo.
- duskwuff 11y agoThe color list is already ridiculously large anyway -- early web browsers allowed color names to be used from the X11 "rgb.txt" [1], bringing us colors like "papayawhip", "firebrick", and (as mentioned below) "peru". So it's not as though adding one more color is some sort of huge burden. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names
- natural219 11y agoFor those unaware of Eric Meyer's story, I implore you to listen to Shop Talk Show's interview with him about the general topic of "designing for crisis": http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/161-with-eric-meyer/ http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/161-with-eric-meyer/ This topic I feel would be dear to many HN readers, as his experience really gets at the heart of design, technology, and the human experience. It raises the question of how important design really is in those key moments of crisis and tragedy, and how we still have a long way to go in our society to optimize for the 5% of experiences that fall outside of "the happy path" (double entendre). Hearts out to Mr. Meyer for his loss.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoDoes anyone know why #663399 was chosen in particular? I did some quick searching but couldn't find much. As far as I can find, this was the original suggestion, which doesn't specify why it was that particular one. http://discourse.specifiction.org/t/name-663399-becca-purple-in-css4-color/225 http://discourse.specifiction.org/t/name-663399-becca-purple...
- legulere 11y agoThe CSS colors seem like a bad idea to me. Apart from the basic ones it's pretty hard to set them into relation. I don't know the difference between brown and saddlebrown without looking. They also add to code-bloat without really adding a functionality.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoAs to the question of if it should be done? Normally I'm one to optimize, so much so that premature optimization is something I must stand vigilant for. And I do understand how adding names to a standard adds ever so slight a bloat. And I understand there are only ~4K shorthand hex colors to assign names to. But honestly I don't have a problem with this. I'm having a hard time explaining why, but the simplistic way to express it is by saying it is art. Part of the CSS specification has now impacted me emotionally on a deeper level than most art I've seen, especially when you read why it is rebeccapurple and not beccapurple. No, it isn't perfectly optimized. But there is value in trading spartan utility for beauty, especially when the cost is so low. Even though I cannot articulate why, given this knowledge I now care more about the CSS sepcifications.