[whatwg] restricted palette for input type=color

[Markus Ernst]

Am 03.05.2012 00:50 schrieb Ian Hickson:
> On Mon, 7 Mar 2011, Markus Ernst wrote:
>>
>> A content management or blog system for a corporate website allows to
>> set font and background colors. The designers define allowed color sets
>> the way that the corporate design guidelines are respected, and that the
>> text is always readable - e.g. three light color shades for backgrounds,
>> and two corporate colors and black for text.
>
> You don't really need a colour picker for that... it's more a<select>
> than a colour picker. Or a series of radio buttons. If the presentation is
> more the concern, then we should probably rely on Web Components to solve
> the problem (styling a<select>  with a new presentation, e.g.).

It is actually an input field that requires a valid color to be entered; 
whether it is presented as a color picker or a select box may be up to 
the UA. I don't see any consistency in having to use different HTML 
elements whether the selection of colors is defined by the UA (e.g. 
showing a picker with all colors of the web palette) or by the author.

Anyway, 4.10.7.1.15 of the spec states in the bookkeeping details that 
the @list content and IDL attributes apply to input type=color - if I 
understand this correctly, it addresses my proposal.

[...]

>> - The fact that most CMS do not have restricted color sets so far, does
>> not mean there is no demand for it, but rather shows the difficulty of
>> customizing tools such as TinyMCE. It is a hassle for CMS implementors
>> (who are often not highly skilled JS programmers), if they are expected
>> to respect corporate design guidelines.
>
> I don't follow. Right now (before type=color is widely implemented) it's
> easier to provide a limited set of colours than all colours. Surely then
> we should see more CMSes have restricted colour sets if it's a matter of
> difficulty.

The CMS I know are shipped with TinyMCE or KHTML or whatever rich text 
editors. They usually provide a color picker with a predefined set of 
colors (iirc it is mostly the web palette) by default, which is 
non-trivial to override or customize; IMHO this is the reason why 
customized color pickers are not widely used. There are definitely use 
cases for them.