- From: Molly E. Holzschlag <mollyh@opera.com>
- Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:38:42 -0400
- To: "Patrick Garies" <pgaries@fastmail.us>, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Cc: "Brian Manthos" <brianman@microsoft.com>, Christoph Päper <christoph.paeper@crissov.de>, "www-style@w3.org list" <www-style@w3.org>
RGB and HSL are completely different color spaces. HSL, as Tab has indicated, has no known corollary to hexadecimal or shorthand notation. In RGB, you must use an integer to get a certain color rgb(50, 100, 80) or a percentage rgb(50%, 100%, 80%). The alpha transparency is simply a value in the fourth spot from 0-1.0 to denote opacity/transparency. In HSL, the model is completely different. We take a traditional color wheel of 360 degrees, with 1 and 360 both representing red. The integer we take from HSL is an angle on the wheel. Then, we add percentages of saturation and light hsl(300, 50%, 50%) and we then add a fourth value from 0-1.0 to denote opacity/transparency. What we need to realize is that HSL is *by design* far more intuitive than RGB, which means having corollaries to hex or shorthand are not required. Go ahead and give it a try. You start with the HUE, and then you saturate, or add light. You never have to look up a color except perhaps for the first integer. After that, it's an extraordinarily intuitive means of working with color, creating palettes that work well together, and so on. So even if there were a way to shorthand HSL it doesn't make sense from a design standpoint to do so. It's a shorthand in and of itself. -- Molly E. Holzschlag Web Evangelist, Developer Relations, Americas Member, W3C CSS Working Group Opera Software mollyh@opera.com "Follow the Standards / Break the Rules" http://dev.opera.com/ http://molly.com/
Received on Monday, 6 September 2010 18:39:28 UTC