Re: [css3-color] #rrggbbaa annotation

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Alex Meiburg <timeroot.alex@gmail.com> wrote:
> As for the mapping (from 0-255 to 0-1 float), this might be well based in
> part off how UA's currently store the Alpha value. If a decimal is actually
> rounded to a hex value and used like that.... great. I think 0x80 should map
> to 0.50196078431372548 then. But if alpha values are actually stored as
> floats, we really would be taking some (minimal) freedom away from the
> developer, so I feel it's a bit more open to discussion how it should be
> handeled. Could someone explain how UA's handle these?

Webkit is weird.  It stores the alpha as the highest byte in a 32-bit
integer.  In other words, it stores it as an integer from 0-255.

Then, when actually displaying the color, if the alpha value is 255,
the color is fully opaque - the opacity is 1.0.  Otherwise, the alpha
value is divided by **256** to provide an opacity value.

Yes, this is crazy, as this means that the opacity jumps from 254/256
straight to 256/256.  I suspect we need to fix this, but I also
suspect it'll break a decent number of tests that I'll need to fix.

~TJ