[whatwg] HTML5 Input (Color)

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

2010/7/28 Leo Dutra ™ <leodutra.br at gmail.com>:
> Hello, everyone.
> I were asking myself about HTML5 input with type "color". I'm a brazillian
> developer and I see a huge problem with the new input type. The problem is
> that RGB color names are expected to be written in English. This is not a
> good, or even, usability.

There is no official list of localizations of the standard sets of
colors.  It kind of sucks for people for whom English isn't their
first language, but nearly all programming languages are based on
English.

Further, once you start giving aliases for some languages, it becomes
hard to justify not giving aliases in *every* language.  This isn't
very sustainable.

> I'd like input type="color" to work for any
> language without "porting acrobatics". So I have a new idea.
> What about a color picker, and no more langs? ARGB or RGBA (with option to
> restrict to RGB, maybe other restriction patterns). It's independent of
> language, easy to implement and much more usable. Social themes, HTML5 slide
> sites, RIAs, and all. Imagine the power of picking any color natively and
> send a 0xff00ff00ff to the server.
> It's still draft, and time to don't twist the web again.

<input type=color> is *supposed* to expose a color picker.  That was
its entire point, actually.  Webkit-based browsers don't do it right
now, and just expose the validation part, where it requires a valid
color.  Just wait a bit for the browsers to finish up their forms
support, and you'll see a proper color picker there, completely
language-independent.

(Also, btw, <input type=color> will only allow selecting RGB colors.
If you want the A, you have to handle it yourself, perhaps with an
<input type=range>.)

~TJ