Now in Magenta
Posted on January 1, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 36 Comments
For those of you who were complaining earlier in the day that the background color of the Whatever looked like the color of kitty litter (presumably unused kitty litter), allow me to point out the latest innovation of the Whatever: The ability to change background colors on the fly. Right now the color is a pale magenta, because I asked Athena what color she would like to have Whatever be, and she wanted this (it’s actually closer to a lavender or even an orchid, but that’s because the actual magenta color would be a bit painful on the eyeballs).
Since I can now change the background color largely at whim, I think I probably shall, more often than not. There are also other innovations, which I’ll note later. In the meantime, any background color requests? One request per customer.
Update, 11:13 am, 1/2/06: I’ve changed the color again, to the hexadecimal value suggested by Pixelfish in the first comment. Just because I can. However, don’t worry, I won’t be changing colors here evey eight hours. Once every few days at most, I suspect, after i get done playing with it like a shiny toy.
I LIKED the sagey colour you had before. How about #1B6777?
Ooooh. Hexadecimal. A woman after my own heart.
Can you do a colour out of space?
I too liked the previous color. This one HURTS. But since Athena chose it, I’ll deal.
When I was 12, my family moved to a new house and I was allowed to choose the carpet in my bedroom. I chose this horrible orange shag. I Loved it.
I was 12.
I didn’t see kitty litter at any point, just grassy green, and now a purple that is almost exactly the same color as my newly-dyed bathrobe.
I’m thinking of painting my office in “Asparagus” by Behr. Dunno what the hex code for it is…
I’m partial to a nice, soothing green, myself. 238e23 is a little dark, perhaps. But something on those lines.
Gee, does this mean that should listen to Magenta to accompany this color scheme?
(Not that I typically need much incentive to listen to them…)
I don’t mind the various colors, but no matter how much I stretch the browser window the end of the banner gets cut off on my compy, while all those nice purple pixels in the right-hand column fust unused.
(Are 12-inch laptop screens really that small? Sigh.)
Yeah, the banner across the top says “Whatever (happy”
It’s been saying that since the scheme change away from the Athena picture. And I have a 20″ G5 iMac, which is a widescreen.
You can consider this a vote for d5c270 (a sort of beige) or 70a6d5 (a pastel-ish blue) or 70d57c (sea-foam green).
I tend to prefer understated colors, although I also like to combine them with bold colors for effect sometimes.
0xDEADBEEF isn’t pretty, but it might be a starting point. Or maybe something more Cthulu colored. You know, the sort of color that plants in small, New England towns become, after a meteor strike.
MWT:
“Yeah, the banner across the top says ‘Whatever (happy'”
It actually says “Whatever (Happy 2007!)”
The entire page is designed to be viewable on 1024×758, so if you’re using a smaller screen resolution than that it’s gonna clip. However, the “(Happy 2007!)” bug is not a permanent feature; it’ll be gone in a couple of days at most.
sky-blue pink
What smells purple?
I vote with PixelFish – I’m down with the #1B6777…
Aaargh.. This one’s even worse!
It makes me think of christmas (actually it makes me think of the time before christmas, advent) and that just makes me sad. My holidays are over and John Scalzi is teasing me by saying: “Hang in there; it’s only, like, 350 days to the next one.”
It’s painful. Really. The multicolor bar to the left makes it even worse.
Mauve!
Puce.
But only because I’ve wondered what puce looked like ever since I learned to play HACK and started stumbling across those puce potions.
Chartreuse, just cause it’s fun to say.
Pale spring green.
I’ll vote for ecru. It’s a great word!
I”m okay with this color. Just okay, though.
It looks like the cover of the last Autechre album to me.
AGH! NOW IN WEIRD ASS SEA GLASS GREEN! I FEEL LIKE THE CHAMELEON IN THE BEGINNING OF CURIOUS GEORGE!
Ahem. Sorry.
Hey, what about putting alternate style sheets for the various selections, so every reader could choose their own preferred color? I like selection.
And if you want to be really sophisticated, some JS/cookie combo to make the selection easier for the people who don’t know what CSS is, and to have it kept until you change the whole theme completely again?
Power to the masses! ;-)
Just saying…
Yaron:
“Hey, what about putting alternate style sheets for the various selections, so every reader could choose their own preferred color?”
That would require vastly higher competence with CSS than I possess, basically.
I have CSS skillz. (It’s part of my job.) If you have questions, you can ask me. :)
hey, the colorband has stopped moving! That’s always good.
Back when Blogger was a wee little project by Pyra, Eric Glish created this little template that randomly chooses a background colour, then sloooooowly cycles through the spectrum and back again. He will let you play with the template as you wish as long as you link back to him.
Something like this would be guaranteed to hit all the colours we love and hate several times in one visit. And it isn’t as if Chang has been using those eyes, anyway.
Moving? it’s strobing. or perhaps that’s just my eyes. I think it leaves an afterimage.
If you make the left side eybleeding making thing … uh… color bar a *graphic* I can use the “remove this object” function in firefox to kill it in my browser.
I like how no matter what the background color is, it will clash horribly with the rainbow colorbar thingy. Hours of fun in every stylesheet!
Now, now, people. All the color bar wants is to be loved.
Leave the color bar. Take the section with the text and change to some horribly obsolete “futuristic” font. Then emulate LKH’s light blue/green on black and watch all of our heads explode.
Ouch, Ouch, Ouch. Chang’s Eyes! Chang’s Eyes!
@Nathan – You are an evil evil person. Even the worst design Scalzi could think of on his own (err, that is not a challenge John. Seriously. Please) won’t come close to the horror of LKH’s blog.
@John – Unlike PixelFish dealing with CSS isn’t a part of my job, but I do know more than enough to do the job. So now you have at least two options of people who can explain how to do it.
Of course, if by mentioning your lack of CSS skills what you really meant to say is that we should all shut up and learn to love whatever colors you, or Athena, choose, then that’s fine too and feel free to ignore us.
And for the record, I do like the color bar.
@Josh Jasper – It IS a graphic. conveniently located at http://scalzi.com/gifbackground.gif for your possible blocking pleasure.
Or, for extra fun, instead of blocking it you can override it with your very own local graphic. And have a customized Whatever just for you.
This would, though, require some CSS skills, or the right extension.