For STYLE Designers: S2: Color Coding

[ninetydegrees]

One of the most frequent issues in styles is the use of 'unreliable' color combinations. I explain. When there is no property for the element you want to color, you often use another existing property as DW asks you not to hardcode any color. And it's good and it works... for *your* themes. Unfortunately, further down the road, someone will make a darker theme, a lighter theme, or use a background color where you didn't and that's where text becomes unreadable because the text color is set to page_text and the background color is set to entry_background and, while page_text always works on page_background, it doesn't on anything else. See? Fail–safe property combo vs not-really-fail-safe property combo.

I'm not pointing fingers here. If I did I would point one at myself because I've done that. Funky Circles used to have some silly combos like entry_border over header_background or some other nonsense and I hadn't realized how bad it was till I tried to make some new themes.

Of course, it's something patchers should pay attention to as well but remember that you know your style best and two brains are often better than one. :) So if you assign a color to something there is no property for and you have to set it to another existing property please try to mention it in your entry so that the patcher can see if new properties need to be created.

You can also create new properties yourself in your layout layer using this:

propgroup colors_child {
    property Color new_property_name { des = "Description of what this color is for."; }
    property Color other_property_name { des = "Description of what this other color is for."; }
}

Theme designers, you can help too. If you notice something which is not working or make theming hard please mention it so that a dev can investigate.

And a reminder that all existing color properties can be found at http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layersource?id=550&fmt=html starting at 'Journal style - basic colors'.


Finally, keep on rocking. <3

Comments

[syntheid]

Is there like an "aim for" limit on how many different properties/colors we should have in a theme? Because on the one hand, the more properties, the more easily customizable, but then I wasn't sure if anyone has an idea of a good general limit of "Now there's too many options." Since on the one of mine I was trying to convert (and you were helping me on, and I'm sorry I just sort of ... have left that hanging) I wasn't sure if I needed more or less or was just making this too complicated. (Probably the latter.)

[musyc]

I'm wondering this myself. I like to customize colors down to the little date/time text, and if I had my druthers, that would be in the wizard for non-CSS-comfortable users to be able to change, too. :) A little much, though, I assume.

[ninetydegrees]

I don't think there's one. While some users may feel there are too many options others may be glad to finally be able to easily customize little details.