Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014)

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014Jun/0312.html

by mendelk • 11 years ago

95 33 11 years ago

lists.w3.org

captn3m0• 11 years ago

- Eric Meyer wrote about it: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/

The purple is actually quite vibrant: http://www.color-hex.com/color/663399

ddoolin3• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity: Are there any other semantically unrelated color names in the spec?

scarmig3• 11 years ago

aliceblue, though that was a pre-existing color.

Here's a full list:

http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/color.html

ddoolin3• 11 years ago

Thanks! (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.

loganfsmyth• 11 years ago

I see an "aliceblue". No idea if there is a history behind it.

http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-color/#named-colors

talmand• 11 years ago

AliceBlue, 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.

ddoolin3• 11 years ago

I'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))

rburhum2• 11 years ago

As 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.

scarmig3• 11 years ago

Peru was introduced to CSS from its status as an X11 color.

It originated as a color name ("Peruvian Brown") in the 1920's, though I'd be interested in seeing how that happened.

91bananas2• 11 years ago

Not semantically unrelated, but my personal favorite is "tomato"

ecaron• 11 years ago

Longer conversation on this from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677

91bananas2• 11 years ago

Eric'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• 11 years ago

I 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/

cbd19842• 11 years ago

One 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• 11 years ago

there is a limit of 16^6 24 bit colors

cbd19842• 11 years ago

So 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.

calvin• 11 years ago

You can check to see if your browser has the color:

http://output.jsbin.com/derewavufu/1

Look for purple background. Firefox 38 and Chrome 42 have it.

huxley• 11 years ago

Safari 8.0.6 too

glass-• 11 years ago

IE11 and Opera 29 have it.

toxican2• 11 years ago

I 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• 11 years ago

They 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.

toxican2• 11 years ago

Agreed. 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• 11 years ago

The 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

natural219• 11 years ago

For 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/

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.

Lawtonfogle2• 11 years ago

Does 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...

legulere• 11 years ago

The 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.

Lawtonfogle2• 11 years ago

As 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.

Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014)

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