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Blogs » Archive for October 4th, 2007
Skinning and color palettes with HSV and transparent PNGs
I work on the Ajaxy Web UI for Chandler Server (a.k.a. Cosmo), an open-source server that works with the Chandler personal information manager (PIM). You can take a look at the Web UI by creating an account on our free online service, Chandler Hub.
As we started implementing more and more of the calendar features in the Web UI, I eventually needed a set of color palettes to use for each of the users’ calendars, so they can tell them apart at a glance. (Next step is letting users pick the color for a calendar like Chandler Desktop can.)
Each calendar for a user would need a palette of similar colors for the events, complete with pretty gradients to make the event blocks pop out a bit in the UI. Since this is a very JavaScript-heavy Web UI, I needed to do this in the most lightweight way possible. A bunch of different images for each separate color was not ideal due to the huge download that would require.
I ended up using two tricks together that gave me a huge variety of colors and shades, and only used two images.
Transparent PNGs for color gradients
The first trick, suggested to me …
.NET Framework Source Code to be Released!
Scott Guthrie has made the very, very cool announcement that the bulk of the .NET framework source code will be released! If you have ever spent hours trying to decypher ASP.NET in reflector, or pulling your hair out trying to make custom controls play well, this should make you a very happy person.
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