Longer conversation on this from last year: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677</a>
- Eric Meyer wrote about it: <a href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/" rel="nofollow">http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/</a><p>The purple is actually quite vibrant: <a href="http://www.color-hex.com/color/663399" rel="nofollow">http://www.color-hex.com/color/663399</a>
Eric's writings about his daughter, his family, himself through it all, are <i>intense</i> to read through. Glad the community was able and willing to push this through so quickly as a sign of respect to her.
I understand the arguments against this, but I don't think I've ever met a web developer that actually still uses the color names. I saw it often in 2007 or so, but not at all anymore. So I'm left not really caring about a slippery slope of names appearing in a list of things nobody uses.<p>And I should say that despite color names not really being used, it's still a very nice gesture.
For those unaware of Eric Meyer's story, I implore you to listen to Shop Talk Show's interview with him about the general topic of "designing for crisis": <a href="http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/161-with-eric-meyer/" rel="nofollow">http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/161-with-eric-meyer/</a><p>This topic I feel would be dear to many HN readers, as his experience really gets at the heart of design, technology, and the human experience. It raises the question of how important design really is in those key moments of crisis and tragedy, and how we still have a long way to go in our society to optimize for the 5% of experiences that fall outside of "the happy path" (double entendre).<p>Hearts out to Mr. Meyer for his loss.
You can check to see if your browser has the color:<p><a href="http://output.jsbin.com/derewavufu/1" rel="nofollow">http://output.jsbin.com/derewavufu/1</a><p>Look for purple background. Firefox 38 and Chrome 42 have it.
I just want to point to a post by Eric which essentially captures what it's like to hear that a loved one is chronically sick.<p><a href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2013/08/19/77-hours/" rel="nofollow">http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2013/08/19/77-hours/</a>
As to the question of if it should be done?<p>Normally I'm one to optimize, so much so that premature optimization is something I must stand vigilant for. And I do understand how adding names to a standard adds ever so slight a bloat. And I understand there are only ~4K shorthand hex colors to assign names to.<p>But honestly I don't have a problem with this. I'm having a hard time explaining why, but the simplistic way to express it is by saying it is art. Part of the CSS specification has now impacted me emotionally on a deeper level than most art I've seen, especially when you read why it is rebeccapurple and not beccapurple.<p>No, it isn't perfectly optimized. But there is value in trading spartan utility for beauty, especially when the cost is so low.<p>Even though I cannot articulate why, given this knowledge I now care more about the CSS sepcifications.
Does anyone know why #663399 was chosen in particular? I did some quick searching but couldn't find much.<p>As far as I can find, this was the original suggestion, which doesn't specify why it was that particular one.<p><a href="http://discourse.specifiction.org/t/name-663399-becca-purple-in-css4-color/225" rel="nofollow">http://discourse.specifiction.org/t/name-663399-becca-purple...</a>
The CSS colors seem like a bad idea to me. Apart from the basic ones it's pretty hard to set them into relation. I don't know the difference between brown and saddlebrown without looking. They also add to code-bloat without really adding a functionality.
One way around the implied slippery slope is to impose a time limit: If anyone still wants this in after twenty years, it goes in, but not before.<p>Yes, it's arbitrary. These are <i>color names</i>. They're inherently arbitrary. If there's no limit, our list of CSS colors will become a list of dead people, which is nice and all but isn't useful for the task of assigning human-meaningful names to points on the color spectrum. Let's see, was this dead kid bluer or redder than that dead kid...