Do you code for color?

There's a reason I ask...

[tangor]

These days I run HIGH CONTRAST (ie, getting as old as Methuselah, rheumy eyes, bent back,and all that happy stuff).

I do have two systems for observation purposes ... my high contrast (black screen, white text, orange unvisited, bright green visited) and that's it) and a "regular" where I can test out/view color options for presentation purposes.

Pastel/transparent/half-screen are my defaults for sidebars/headers (no images) and limited palettes, verging on monochrome... some are blues, some are greens, and only for the rowdy stuff reds verging on orange-yellow.

From time to time I scan the web on the "color" system and have noticed an increasing LACK of color. Could it be that CONTENT and not graphic design is coming back on vogue?

Then again, I have a rather limited taste on topic/subject when personally surfing, so I might have missed out on the greatest hits.

Do you colorize your web? Do you seek it out?

This inquiring mind wants to know.

[csdude55]

I rely on colors a lot for my coding, in an attempt to avoid using images as much as possible. My most common colors are black, white, and gray, with tones of blue, red, and yellow spread out.

But recently I've heard people refer to my sites as being an ugly brown on brown!

That's a concern, with screens showing such drastically different hues there's a risk of things looking amateurish, or even invisible. My pretty yellow-on-black logo... if someone's screen shows #000 as a brown, and #F7D608 as another shade of brown... ?

Google AMP also seems to be trying to change the internet so that all sites more or less look the same.

Ten years ago, I could build sites for clients with the huge selling point of them having something totally unique that doesn't look like everyone else. But today it seems like everyone wants to look alike. Which makes no sense at all to me.

[tangor]

How devices render color has always been a concern, even back in the BBS days!

As for the "lookalike" that is going on these days, perhaps it is commonsense that finally came back in vogue that black on white (like books/newspapers) still makes the best sense, with color reserved for special stuff.

One can only hope.

I know that I do not miss that near decade of flash sites with incomprehensible colors jarring eyeballs AND adding all dancing jiggly stuff, too!

[csdude55]

Man, Flash almost put me out of business as a designer before I chose to leave it on my own! It was a constant request from clients to make huge, "pretty" Flash intro pages, and a constant argument on my end that it was a bad choice... expensive to build that inevitably deterred customers rather than attracting new ones.

So clients would either say they agreed and then go with someone else... or they pushed me to do it anyway, then blame me when their online business didn't explode like they expected.

It got to the point where I stopped putting my name on client's websites. I would begrudgingly take their money and give them what they wanted, but wasn't about to take the blame for it!

I'm so glad I don't deal with that anymore...

But anyway. My sites now have a colorful header with a pretty background and logo, roughly 100px in height. The rest is generally black text on a white background. I've noticed that the complaints I've had almost entirely come from women, so I'm wondering if maybe it's too sterile for feminine tastes? I'm thinking about setting up a user feature where they can assign their own color schemes... take this crap back to Geocities! lol

[tangor]

Wow! What a memory phart! Geocities! (my first ugly!)

Then again, over the years, some sites offer "change font, change font size, change color, change change change) which is an immense amount of code. Never saw the sense in that. Can't think of any better what to tank a site than to allow the USER to fiddle with such!

(Meanwhile, personally) I control what I see (accessibility stuff) by killing all site font, color parameters with what I need to enable viewing the content. Using the browser to control that.

One (or three) sites that I care about in recent days, where I have a relationship with site owners/coders I have sent screen shots of what I SEE under my terms and a comparison to what they offer with the "fancy". Sparked a few conversations. :)

The web with money is aging. The young web (new folks and those under 20, usually without money) might enjoy some of that garish ... and conversions becomes a problem. If the old web can't read it, no income. If the young web reads it, still no income.

Hence whatever color I use is "transparent" as in monochromatic shades of same color, and only to visually offset already defined "zones of content". (Asides, sidebars, navigation, headers, footers, image borders...as needed, special margins/padding.

If it looks okay when rendered in high contrast, for information to the user, then I am happy camper... and hope that the subtle colors are useful for those with better eyes.

I do use bold colors (those that pass the high contrast criteria) when necessary, but these uses are very limited, and almost always for "call-to-action" items.

[csdude55]

My knowledge might be old school, too, but as I'm rebuilding my site (which is taking #*$!-well forever), I have a standing focus group, ready to give feedback on everything from appearance, layout, understanding of new features, and ease of use. That focus group consists of teenagers (16-19), a handful of early- to mid-twenties, a few people in their 30s, and several more people in their 50s and 60s. I'm trying to get a near 50/50 split of men and women in each demographic.

You really don't hear people talk about "focus groups" with their website anymore, but it's really the only logical route. It's hard for a developer (especially one that's being doing it for most of their lives) to think on the level of someone that only marginally knows how to use Google. But they're going to be a large portion of our audience, so we desperately need their input.

[ken_b]

I'm a bit color blind so I use color VERY sparingly. My pages are white with black text and my nav bars are what looks to me like the nav bar at the top of this page.

But that doesn't mean my pages are bland because they feature at least one and often 3 -5 good sized images.

Which brings me to the task of editing images. I don't mess with colors on images. I rely on the auto-fix feature of my editing software to handle that and hope for the best.

My youth was filled with teachers saying things like "what an interesting use of color" :)

.

[Lexur]

I started to change my websites to dark mode and the most eye-catching color there is ... white.


P.S.: I changed to dark mode in all aps in my smartphone and now I get tired less and the battery lasts longer.