Comment by Maciek Fitzner on "CSS Named Colors: Groups, Palettes, Facts, & Fun"

The CSS color names is one of those things I haven't really explored until very recently. My default mode is to just grab the hex/hsl values. But white working on something last month I finally caved and used the names. Lime came up most frequently. Which got me thinking: if it's #0f0 why is it called lime, not just green? And why, in that case, is green #080? This undermines the whole RGB naming convention. It should be RLB, then Also, whoever decided to call rgb(221, 160, 221) - or, should I say, rlb(221, 160, 221) "plum" has probably never seen the real thing. Same with indigo. Which looks like the color of an actual plum. Don't even get me started on the magenta/fuchsia thing. I'm team magenta, all the way. And team cyan. And team gray. Also, why is octarine not a thing? This was a fun read!. Had some good laughs, and learned something, too!

Wow. I'd say your comment is even more entertaining than the article. You really DID fall down the named colors rabbit hole. Lol.

In most real projects, I'll reach for hex or rgba, but I really like named colors on personal projects because they're fun/quirky and they offer a simple, built-in design token system (sort of). So I have less to think about.

I did not realize that about the "lime" vs. "green" thing. I may need to add it to the article.
Yeah, you really are just touching the tip of the iceberg regarding some names not aligning with their namesakes. There are so many color names that are out of touch with reality. What the heck is a papayawhip? peru? That's a country.
I'm teams magenta, cyan, grey. But lately I've been liking fuchsia because I finally started spelling it right without looking.
I've never even heard of octarine. Led me to some more interesting reads.

Thanks so much for the comment. It was lovely!

Austin Gil I've noticed the green isn't #0f0 when I did the reainbow gradient with names, and then with hsl via cycling the hue angle. It's also weird that the hue-rotate filter seems a misnomer. You'd expect it to cycle through colors of the rainbow - but what it is, in fact, is hue-chroma: colors go crazy in ways that I can't quite fathom. Here's an example from an old codepen of mine: codepen.io/MackFitz/pen/oNZMXeZ - these aren't all rainbow colors. Oh, and speaking of octarine, I thought about it when you mentioned Rebecca Purple. Having a CSS octarine - wildly inaccurate as it might've been - would've been a nice way to commemorate Sir Terry.

Maciek Fitzner Whoa, that Codepen is awesome. I could hardly believe it was no-js

Austin Gil I made it my life's mission to use CSS over anything more convenient, at all cost ;) I know how much easier it'd be to use JS, SVG or, say, Three,js - but it somehow feels more noble to suffer for art, and try things no sensible person would bother doing (at least not with just CSS). This I consider my craziest: codepen.io/MackFitz/pen/jOxzKmL

Maciek Fitzner Yeah, I can relate. I try to make the right call in practice, but I definitely have enjoyed the challenge of purely CSS only solutions.

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