Standardize color selection throughout site

[foxfirefey]

Title:
Standardize color selection throughout site

Area:
Customization, circle management

Summary:
I want an improved color picker, and all places on the site that pick colors to be the same.

Description:
Right now, I can think of two places on Dreamwidth that have color selection:

http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options?group=style
http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/edit

I want us to pick out a jQuerified plugin, such as ColorPicker, and use it on both of those pages instead of the current disparate systems.

This suggestion has a caveat, however, in that it changes the way the circle colors work--right now, those colors seem to be artificially limited to a given set in the front end. However, I don't think giving people more options with a (possibly better) UI would be amiss here.

Any implementation would have to consider users who do not use Javascript, however, and make sure they have a usable interface still.

Poll #3752 Standardize color selection throughout site

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
17 (53.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (3.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (3.1%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (40.6%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[zvi]

What's the advantage of using a third-party plugin over just switching over one of those colorpicking uses to the same system as the other?

(Also, there's a third place where people select color; http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/add?user=exampleuser&action=subscribe starts off with an interface similar to http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/edit but allows you to switch to the Hue/Saturation/Brightness picker that's the second level on the http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options?group=style chooser.)

[foxfirefey]

Well, I find the current color system in the S2 area to be clumsy and awkward--it pops open a new window, and current color picking implementations have gotten sleek enough that you don't really need that anymore. For instance, I imagine on something like an iPad, the current implementation is less than ideal compared to an in-page Javascript one.

Using a third party plugin is just common sense; there's open source ones and we use jQuery as our Javascript base. It's way less work to build on other open source products!

And hey, good catch!

[azurelunatic]

I would like to note that the LJ friends management API allows third-party tools to specify different colors, even though this may have been one of the things that broke for us in the WTF switch. So allowing any arbitrary color for friend colors is supported legacy behavior, and thus tradition would be a bogus reason to turn this down.

[zvi]

You can set any color if you do it through relationship management to a single account, instead of the circle management page.

[foxfirefey]

Yeah, I looked in the backend and it was using hex codes, so there's no technical reason people shouldn't be able to enter any color they want. Not to mention it'd be a lot easier for somebody to make it match their layout's colors that way!

[jadelennox]

you can set circle colors to arbitrary hex codes in the modify circle status page, and I do, because it's the most accessible option to me.

That widget you linked to has accessibility problems, so we'd have to pick the most accessible widget, probably tested by the usual crew.

[foxfirefey]

Ah, yes, that is an important aspect I am not always the best to evaluate!

There's two others listed here, so maybe one is better in that respect (probably not the Farbtastic one, though).

Additionally, it might be possible to fix the accessibility issues in ColorPicker, depending on what they are.