[whatwg] <input type=color>

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Martin Atkins wrote:
> Benjamin Joffe wrote:
> > Have the following possible values for the TYPE attribute been considered
> > for the INPUT element?
> > 
> > type="color"
> > The user agent would display an appropriate colour picker and would send a
> > hexidecimal string represting that colour to the server.
> 
> I like this idea. It's simple and it's something I've implemented (and 
> seen implemented) dozens of times.

Added.


On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Sander wrote:
>
> I like this one too. It should have an pallet attribute that defines the 
> color pallet. I'm not shure how though, cause on one hand I'd like to be 
> able to choose easily from standard pallets, but on the other hand I'd 
> like the option to create custom pallets. Perhaps pallet="custom" 
> combined with a datalist could be an option here.

I've made list="" and <datalist> apply to type=color, but not given any 
control over the actual range of colours allowed, so users can pick any 
opaque sRGB color.


On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> 
> Same here. A use case I can imagine is an authoring tool that let's users
> create CSS rules. Simply clicking the wanted colour avoids the risk of
> (syntactically) incorrect color values.
> 
> However, to make it complete it would have to work both ways: if the 
> form defines a color (<input type="color" value="#66f">), that colour 
> should be presented s selected by the UA's color picker. Perhaps that's 
> something to leave entirely up to the UA, but I'd like it better if the 
> at least suggests that they may do.

I've required the value="" to set the initial value.


> I wonder what the fallback mechanism should be though. What should UAs 
> that do not/can not provide a color picker do?

type=text fallback seems to work ok for this.


> Could be useful if you'd need to allow the user to choose only from a 
> limited list of options, yes. If there already is a standard that 
> describes colour palettes, that might be useful. If not, this might be 
> too complicated.

If you really want a specific set of colours, use <select>.


On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
> 
> There are many possible implementations for different purposes.
> Here is one of color selectors we use in HTML:
> http://www.terrainformatica.com/sciter/screenshots/color-chooser.png
> 
> I think it is not realistic to define all of them in single 
> specification - too many different use cases.

I've made the spec say the control is a color well, leaving the details of 
the color picker to the UA.


> I would define some generic extensible mechanism for inputs rather than 
> defining particular input type=foo.

See XBL2 for this.


On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> Martin Atkins wrote:
> > Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> > > http://www.haymespaint.com.au/haymes/colourcentre/
> > > http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html
> > > http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/
> > 
> > These are some rather contrived examples.
> 
> How can you possibly call them contrived, when they are real world 
> examples of colour selection applications?

I haven't made type=color suitable for color-specific applications that 
have rather specific needs (e.g. picking Pantone colors, or colors in a 
specific color space, or whatnot).


On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Martin Atkins wrote:
> 
> Applications for exploring colour spaces already have a satisfactory 
> solution, as in your examples. Since their focus is on colour selection 
> they implement a more elaborate UI that fits their purpose exactly.

Right.


> Likewise, applications such as Google Calendar implement their own UI 
> for exploring the calendar rather than relying on the UI provided by 
> <input type="date">

Right. But Google Calendar could use type=color for the color widget 
instead of rolling their own as they do now.


Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'