Re: [tlug] Color Codes

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Lyle" == Lyle Saxon <Lyle> writes:

    Lyle> These are the colors that show up the same on every computer
    Lyle> no matter what (or so I've been told)."

There are no colors that show up the same on every computer no matter
what; even black and white can be arbitrary.  There is also the issue
of gamma correction, etc.

    Lyle> Is this something that is a big worry?

I doubt it.  I've never seen seen a color-ugly site that wasn't
designed-in ugly to the bone.  As long as you stick to the names in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt you should be in pretty good shape, and you
can always use RGB specs (I think advanced browsers now support stuff
like CMYK, too, YMMV) to avoid the name lookup problem cross-platform.

In practice, most sites use photos and the like; if you're going to do
that, you'd have to work awfully hard to come up with a set of colors
that make the photos look satisfactorily nice and fit into the subset
of colors you can count on being available.

I don't think it's worth worrying about.

For the record, what _is_ a possible worry is underpowered computers
or people who are doing complex visuals (eg in an image or video
editor).  In either case it's possible that excessive use of
non-standard colors (basically, the PC-8 plus their bright versions,
giving 16) will result in the display server running out of colors, in
which case the browser makes do in a browser-specific way.  Such users
will tell the browser to use a "private colormap" which results in
flashing of ugly colors every time she switches applications.

Note that phones and pocket PCs usually don't have this problem
because they don't have enough screen real estate to support more than
one app at a time, nor sufficiently powerful video hardware for
advanced colormap-intensive apps.

    Lyle> And if it is, do browsers go to the very nearest color, or
    Lyle> to something way off-base?

On X, it's not the browser's choice, it's the user's.  Again, since
there's nothing you can do about it, don't worry until you have
evidence you need to, IMHO.

NB -- I am not a professional web designer.


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.