Friday, July 15, 2016

Improving Color on the Web

Dean Jackson:

The past few years have seen a dramatic improvement in display technology. First it was the upgrade to higher-resolution screens, starting with mobile devices and then desktops and laptops. Web developers had to understand high-DPI and know how to implement page designs that used this extra resolution. The next revolutionary improvement in displays is happening now: better color reproduction. Here I’ll explain what that means, and how you, the Web developer, can detect such displays and provide a better experience for your users.

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The Web has often struggled to handle colors correctly. I’m sure there are some readers out there who painfully remember Web-safe colors! While we’ve moved on from that, we still have limitations, such as HTML and CSS having been defined to work only in the sRGB color space. Just like the example of hober’s shoes above, this means there are many colors that your CSS, images, and canvas are unable to represent.

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WebKit now supports the (new to CSS Color Level 4) color-gamut media query.

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This is what members of the WebKit project have proposed for CSS. The current idea is to add a new function called color() that can take a color profile as well as the parameters defining the color.

Gus Mueller:

This writeup is an incredibly great explanation of wide gamut issues with a touch on deep color as well. If you are a developer who uses color in any way, you’re going to want to read this. Wide gamut displays are already here.

Previously: iPad Pro, True Tone, and Color Gamut.

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