Is there an “authoritative” place to find Names for Hexadecimal Colors?
Or isn’t there such a thing?! :-/
Here is a link to a site tat seems pretty neat.
Debbie
The HTML 4.01 spec only officially supports 16 color names: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#h-6.5
Note that orange is missing from the HTML 4.01 spec, but was later included in the CSS 2.1 spec.
The long lost of color names is actually the X11 color name list, and was originally defined for the X Windows System in the linux world. Most modern browsers have adopted this list of names. The X11 color names, plus some of the color names from the SVG 1.0 spec are now officially included in the CSS3 spec. http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#svg-color
Most likely, you won’t have any trouble with them, but generally, I can’t say I used any names beyond the standard 17 in the HTML 4.01 & CSS 2.1 specs. After that, I just use HEX values.
[URL=“http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#h-6.5”]
… and because of the inconsitencies force flow listed, that’s why I don’t use named, and suggest you forget they even exist. Hex colors are so simple, I can’t understand why anyone uses anything else – with the possible exception of using the decimal RGB inside scripts.
I do use only Hexadecimal…
But I also don’t know which Hexadecimal code is the official one for “pink” or “orange” or “gray”.
What I am looking for is a way to cross-reference things, while still using an authoritative source…
Debbie
Ok, guess I’m just not getting the point then…
If I want “red” then I’d choose “#FF0000”
If I want “blue”, then I’d choose “#0000FF”
If I want “pink”, what do I choose?
It is not intuitive picking combinations of RGB…
And if I “eye it” then I could be off?! 
I assume there is some (fairly) universal definition of what “pink” or “orange” or “gray” or “purple” are in RGB/Hexadecimal terms… Right?!
So I was asking for a Cross-Reference Table between “Color Names” and “Hexadecimal/RGB Codes”, so that I don’t have to “eye it”…
Make sense?
Debbie
It depends … off from what? The colours you want are the colours you want. I would rarely use the 16 named colours on a web page because they’re just a bit too primary, a bit too bright and garish, for my taste. Unless you’re trying to colour-match a particular scheme (in which case, just drop the picture into a graphics program and do a colour pick on the shade you want), you choose the colours, that’s what design means.
You’re missing the point…
There is mathematical definition for “pink” out there.
And guessing what is “true pink” using my eye is not very precise.
Last night I wanted to know what the Hex was for “true Pink” because it is not intuitive like #FF0000 for “Red”.
I’m not asking how to choose the best color shade of pink, which is what you’re talking about…
That is a different topic.
Debbie
A bit of basic arithmetic would do you fine in that case!
Pink is a mix of red and white. So you need to take an average of #f00 and #fff - or it might be easier to think of them as rgb(255,0,0) and rgb(255,255,255). Taking the midpoint of each of the three colour scales gives rgb(255,128,128), or #f88.
The problem is that according to the colour chart on w3schools, there is no named colour at #f88, and HTML defines ‘pink’ to be #ffc0cb. That is undoubtedly a shade of pink, but so is #f88. Which is most definitively “pink”? Why is a random shade agreed by a committee any more “real” than one arrived at by pure maths?
The RGB color wheel is no more difficult than CMY – unless you’re still stuck on the completely inaccurate nonsense they teach in grade school of RYB…
Pink is just light red, so add the other two color channels evenly to red until you get the pink you want… #FEE being pretty light, #F88 being dark enough to be considered red again. Shifting it slightly towards magenta by adding blue can make it ‘pop’.
Though my understanding of it could stem from all those years low level programming it as 4 bit binary… where you had IRGB – the top bit being intensity. As such I learned very quickly that blue+green = cyan, blue+red=magenta, and green+red=yellow, for the original 16 CGA colors:
Binary Decimal Name 24 bit Hex/Description
0000 0 Black #000
0001 1 Blue #00A
0010 2 Green #0A0
0011 3 Cyan #0AA
0100 4 Red #A00
0101 5 Magenta #A0A
0110 6 Ochre* #AA0 * CGA monitors convert this to Brown #A50
0111 7 Light Gray #AAA
1000 8 Dark Grey #555
1001 9 Light Blue #55F
1010 10 Light Green #5F5
1011 11 Light Cyan #5FF
1100 12 Light Red #F55
1101 13 Light Magenta #F5F
1110 14 Yellow #FF5 * SOME CGA monitors convert this to #FF0
1111 15 White #FFF
Because I learned that 30 years ago and to program it via binary, I guess doing it today on the fly with a wider range of possibilities just comes naturally to me… that I paint and know the CMY set probably also helps.
Rather than learning names, I’d suggest putting effort into the RGB color wheel, and how to linear lighten and darken values. Additive luminance is a bit different from what people learn early on (subtractive pigments) but it’s the same basic idea, it’s just shifted 60 degrees on the wheel.
Interesting.
Still, my point was that having a table that cross-references “Named Colors” and “Hex Colors” would be handy. Not all colors are as simple (e.g. “brown”, “purple”, etc.) as your example.
Guess I’ll use the links above if needed.
Thanks,
Debbie