Link tags: colour

Sass Color Functions in CSS | Jim Nielsen’s Weblog

I’m not the only one swapping out Sass with CSS for colour functions:

Because of the declarative nature of CSS, you’re never going to get something as terse as what you could get in Sass. So sure, you’re typing more characters. But you know what you’re not doing? Wrangling build plugins and updating dependencies to get Sass to build. What you write gets shipped directly to the browser and works as-is, now and for eternity. It’s hard to say that about your Sass code.

Better Image Optimization by Restricting the Color Index – Eric’s Archived Thoughts

A great little mini case-study from Eric—if you’re exporting transparent PNGs from a graphic design tool, double-check the colour-depth settings!

I’d been saving the PNGs with no bit depth restrictions, meaning the color table was holding space for 2²⁴ colors. That’s… a lot of colors, roughly 2²⁴ of which I wasn’t actually using.

Limiting input type=”color” to a certain palette (from an image) | Christian Heilmann

I never thought of combining the datalist element with input type="color"—it’s pretty cool that it just works!

A Web Developers New Working Week

I think these are great habit-forming ideas for any web designer or developer: a day without using your mouse; a day with your display set to grayscale; a day spent using a different web browser; a day with your internet connection throttled. I’m going to try these!

Online Color Picker From Image - Pick your color

A nice standalone tool for picking colours out of photos, and generating a colour palette from the same photo.

5 Keys to Accessible Web Typography | Better Web Type

Some excellent explanations for these five pieces of sensible typography advice:

1. Set your base font size in relative units
2. Check the colour of your type and only then its contrast
3. Use highly legible fonts
4. Shape your paragraphs well
5. Correctly use the heading levels

The Guardian digital design style guide

What a lovely way to walk through the design system underpinning the Guardian website.

Bonus points for using the term “tweak points”!

Night Mode with Mix Blend Mode: Difference

Here’s a clever shortcut to creating a dark mode by using mix-blend-mode: difference.

Accessible Color Generator – Learn UI Design

This looks like a really useful tool for generating accessibile colour combinations from a starting colour.

Unraveling The JPEG

A deep, deep, deep dive into the JPEG format. Best of all, it’s got interactive explanations you can tinker with, a la Nicky Case or Bret Victor.

Word Bubbles — The Man in Blue

Wheeee! Another fun experiment from Cameron.

The Many Ways to Change an SVG Fill on Hover (and When to Use Them) | CSS-Tricks

This article by Cassie is so, so good!

First off, there’s the actual practical content on how to change the hover styles of SVGs that aren’t embedded. Then there’s the really clear walkthrough she give, making some quite complex topics very understandable. Finally, there’s the fact that she made tool to illustrate the point!

Best of all, I get to work with the super-smart developer who did all this.

Owltastic • Web design by Meagan Fisher Couldwell

My goodness, Meagan’s new site design is absolutely gorgeous! The colour palette, the typography, the texture, the motion design …it all communicates character and personality. Beautiful work!

Oh Hello Ana - Colours of 2018

I love this idea of comparing human colour choices to those of a computer:

I decided to do two things: the top three most used colours of the photo decided by “a computer” and my hand picked choices. This method ended up revealing a couple of things about me.

I also love that this was the biggest obstacle to finding representative imagery:

I wanted this to be an exciting task but instead I only found repeated photos of my cat.

Making single color SVG icons work in dark mode

Another good reason to use the currentColor value in SVGs.

Redesigning your product and website for dark mode — Stuff & Nonsense

Some advice from Andy on creating a dark theme for your website. It’s not just about the colours—there are typography implications too.

Picular

A search engine for colours.

ColorBox by Lyft Design

I don’t really understand what this colour tool is doing or what it’s for, but I like it.

Color Leap - History’s Palettes

Colour palettes throughout the ages that you can copy and use.

‘Never assume anything’: The golden rules for inclusive design

Inclusive design is also future-proofing technology for everyone. Swan noted that many more developers and designers are considering accessibility issues as they age and encounter poor eyesight or other impairments.