Color

What is a good contrast text color on a black background? White. What about on a white background? Black. What about on #f06d06? Less clear. Devon Govett posted a good trick to having CSS pick for you, which works across browsers today. Lea Verou has a much deeper dive. There is supposed to be a […]

One approach to color modes it to do it all in CSS with prefers-color-scheme media queries and/or the light-dark() function. A user toggle can be a future improvement.

Syntax highlighting code on the web happens like coloring any other text on the web happens. You wrap the bits of text you want colored uniquely in some element, probably a meaningless <span>, then select that in CSS and apply a color. Ideally, the span-wrapping happens server-side so client-side JavaScript isn’t tied up doing something […]

Support for the relative color syntax in CSS is across the board now (go interop!), so here we look at some basic (and still very useful) use cases, like applying alpha to a color you have on hand.

Figma has support for variables, and they work with the various typography features you may want to set. For instance, you could create a variable called “Header Font” with a value of “Ideal Sans” and use it in many places.

The website has the most control, since that’s what applies the CSS. But browsers also have a Dark/Light/System setting, and that can fall through to the OS/Device.

There has been a fresh round of enthusiasm and writing around light mode / dark mode support for the web lately. I think it’s driven partially by the new light-dark() function in CSS (CSS Color Module Level 5 spec) that makes it easier to declare values that change depending on the mode. Here’s the basic […]

One of my recent moanings-and-groanings is the fact that seemingly no color-picker supports Display P3 colors. Display P3 allows you to use far more vivid colors then we’ve historically had access to in CSS, but now are totally supported in CSS through newer color functions like oklch(). Not even the built-in color picker to macOS. […]

Eric Portis did a bang up job explaining color spaces on the web. sRGB is, as Eric puts it “the web’s dominant, default color space”, but he doesn’t spend much time on that. Thanks to recent evolutions in web tech, we have access to a wider gamut of colors (P3) and more color spaces than […]

HTML has a color input that is pretty decent: That’s it. Support across the board. However, browsers can and do have different approaches to what happens when the input is used. Ultimately: the user activates the input, may choose a color using the provided UI, and the color becomes the inputs value. It’s not my […]