[OT] Round 2: Webpage design and "Name That Color!"

[Nick Sabalausky]

"spir" <denis.spir at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.1875.1298389603.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On 02/22/2011 03:22 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Nick Sabalausky"<a at a.a>  wrote in message
>> news:ijpvpl$2l8u$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>> I've been updating the docs for my Goldie project in preparation of a 
>>> new
>>> release, and figured the they looked a bit...sterile, so I've tweaked 
>>> the
>>> CSS a bit. And, well, I think I've stumbled upon a heisencolor...(or a
>>> heisenhue, rather)
>>>
>>> Without reading any replies or "cheating" by inspecting the pixels in a
>>> paint program, take a look at this screenshot:
>>>
>>> http://www.semitwist.com/download/goldie0.4docBeta.png
>>>
>>> ...and reply with what color you think the background looks like (the 
>>> main
>>> background, not the
>>> sidebar). And whether or not you like it would be helpful, too, of 
>>> course.
>>> And, strange as this may sound, reply again if you end up changing your
>>> mind on what color it looks like.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks all for the comments! I've made a few more tweaks, put up two 
>> sample
>> pages, and would like to get some opinions on if this now looks "good" or
>> "acceptable" or "bad" (and maybe improvement suggestions for any "bad"
>> votes):
>>
>> http://www.semitwist.com/goldie0.4docBeta2/index.html
>> http://www.semitwist.com/goldie0.4docBeta2/SampleApps/ParseAnything/index.html
>>
>> (Most of the links are broken ATM, I know. And FWIW, "beige" is what I 
>> was
>> trying to go for with the background.)
>>
>> FWIW, the old v0.3 documentation is here:
>>
>> http://www.semitwist.com/goldiedocs/current/Docs/
>>
>> I want to at least make sure that the 0.4 docs are an improvement on 
>> that.
>
> [Nick: I think you'd rather provide a valid email and ask people to reply 
> off list. Would be much nicer, I guess. You can write it down like "nick 
> <at> site <dot> org" to avoid spam bots.]
>
> I think the intention is good, IIUC, but the choice of colors is not.
> There are rules and tricks to choose and "marry" colors but it's a big & 
> difficult domain in any case (it's about impossible if you use a color 
> chooser based on HSV instead of HSL, for some reasons.) And there are 
> indeed questions of taste.
>
> Just as an example:
> * main background color less sad (hue=44): #FCE6A9 (or even more rose, 
> hue=33: #FCD7A9)
> * darken it (L component) for side bar color: #E0CD96
> * intensify it (S component) for frame bg color: #FFE28F
> The contrasts are rather slight, close to minimal; do your own trials.
> You can also play with main foreground color, giving it the same hue 
> (instead of absolute black): eg #383019. I like to also use a color that 
> constrasts with the hue used everywhere else, for instance for titles 
> and/or frame borders: eg #1F3832.
>
> Denis
>
> PS: example using such color choosing principles: http://spir.wikidot.com/

Thanks a lot for all the advice :)

I've tried your suggestions and I think it does look much nicer:

http://www.semitwist.com/goldie0.4docBeta3/index.html
http://www.semitwist.com/goldie0.4docBeta3/SampleApps/ParseAnything/index.html

I might try playing around with the link foreground colors later if I get a 
chance.

I think one of the things that kept thwarting my attempts is the 
relativistic nature of color perception. For instance, when I first tried 
your color suggestions ("Beta3" above), it looked very, very orange to me. 
But then I switched back to my "Beta2" and that suddenly looked downright 
green. Then I looked at your site, which seems fairly rosy, and then back to 
"Beta3" which now looks perfect even though it's the exact same color that 
seemed very orange after looking at "Beta2" first. That effect makes 
adjusting colors seem annoyingly non-deterministic.

Funny thing is, some of those principles you mentioned are things I've been 
aware of (like different hues of black), but without enough artistic 
experience, I'll be dammed if I seem to be able to remember to actually 
*use* half those techniques ;)

I'm realizing now that tweaking based on RGB certainly seems to be a bad 
idea unless you really know what you're doing. HSL is definitely much more 
natural to deal with, and tends to fit the problem domain better, even 
though being a long-time low-level coder has managed to train me to 
automatically think "RGB" whenever I think "color". You do seem to be right 
about HSV being a pain compared to HSL: I'd been using GIMP's color chooser 
which is HSV, and the V is a pain when you want to adjust the brightness of 
a light color without messing with the saturation, too. I don't suppose you 
know offhand of a good free HSL color chooser on Windows?