Re: CSS color palettes

I hear you, Damian.

A "maroon" and color00 are not semantic. .

I prefer not "maroon", but instead "header-border-color". That way, you know
what it's applied to.

What you've done is added an extra layer of abstraction. e.g. "here is my
color palette, not saying what it will be used for, color00 is def'd with a
value (#800) and a name ("maroon").

You have to maintain the keyword name and the hex value in parallel, and
this is not good.

Instead, you can just define colors separately. It is annoying, but makes
skinning more modular. All you have to do is change the CSS file and you're
done.\

This approach is cumbersome, but actually works farily well:

.header-border-color, form-border-color {
    border-color: #800;
}

.header-background-color {
    background-color:
}

The important thing is to be semantic because otherwise, you get confused. I
once worked on a project where everything was like ".c4-bk { color: #7898f9;
}" I'm sure it made sense to the guy who wrote it. That was annoying....

Garrett

On 10/30/06, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitchen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I hear you, Damian.
>
> A semantic way should be used to address the color usage.
>
> Not: "maroon", but "header-border-color".
>
> But what you've done is turned it around and added an extra layer of
> abstraction. e.g. "here is my color palette, not saying what it will be
> used for, color00 is def'd with a value and a name.
>
> You have to maintain the keyword name and the hex value in parallel, and
> this is not good.
>
> Instead, you can just define colors separately. It is annoying, but makes
> skinning more modular.
> This approach is cumbersome, but actually works farily well:
>
> .header-border-color, form-border-color {
>     border-color: #800;
> }
>
> .header-background-color {
>     background-color:
> }
>
> The important thing is to be semantic because otherwise, you get confused.
> I once worked on a project where everything was like ".c4-bk { color:
> #7898f9; }" I'm sure it made sense to the guy who wrote it. That was
> annoying....
>
> Garrett
>
>
> On 10/30/06, Damian Vila <damianvila@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > David Woolley escribió:
> > >> If you want to read an argument for its use you can browse to my
> > blog:
> > >> http://damianvila.wordpress.com/2006/10/23/css-color-palettes-2/
> > >>
> > > You need to give the essence of the use case here; some people read
> > > mail offline.
> > You are right. Sorry for the inconvenience.
> > This is the rationale behind the proposed idea. Keep in mind that it was
> >
> > taken from a blog intended for graphic and web designers:
> > "One of the best features of CSS is implied in its own name: cascading.
> > It means that, if you change a style definition, all elements of a page
> > that have that style applied will change at the same time in a
> > "cascade".
> > As recomended by ths W3C designers must not rely on color alone to
> > convey information. That's a reasonable recomendation that we designers
> > must always follow.
> > As you designers probably know, we use to work with color palettes.
> > Usually a documents has a previously decided range of colors, often
> > limited to just a few, that we use throughout the document. In DTP
> > applications we define this color palette and use it to apply color to
> > the different styles in use. In that way, if we want to change the color
> >
> > scheme, we just have to redefine the color palete and the change is
> > applied to all the elements that use that colors in the document, giving
> > the document a different feeling. In the same way, we can use the same
> > style but different colors for different document sections. But in CSS,
> > if you want to do that you have to creave a whole new style sheet, doing
> > a "find & replace" all over the CSS to change the color definitions.
> > That's why I'd like to see CSS Color Palettes implemented in CSS3. In
> > that way colors can cascade the same way other styles do.just by
> > specifying a new sub-palette´. You can use the same CSS for different
> > sections, or you can use the same font size, face, etc. but change the
> > overall feeling by just changing the colors in an easy way."
> > I hope this clarify the idea.
> > Also, remember that I'm a graphic designer, so my programming knowledge
> > is very low. I was counting with the rest of the community to: 1) tell
> > me if the idea was feasible and 2) propose the proper syntax.
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
>
>
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> http://dhtmlkitchen.com/




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