color picker!

[cos]

LiveJournal recently added a feature I've wanted for years (and mentioned in suggestions a few times). In case you haven't noticed: the "add/modify friend" page now has a full color picker. You can choose any of 3-byte RGB value for foreground and background for any friend. This was available through some LJ clients for a long time, but now it's available through the web interface.

I'm sticking to web-safe colors, but that's still a lot more than the meager 46 they had on the web interface before. I'm wasting this rainy afternoon away picking new, more fitting colors, for my LJ friends :)

[Edit: For example, I just made sunspiral the same color as his hair! Whee!]

Comments

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

I'm wasting this rainy afternoon away picking new, more fitting colors, for my LJ friends :)

Interesting. What colours am I?

[cos]

I haven't edited you yet :)

In some cases, though, the appropriate color for someone isn't necessarily what I think of as their color, but is one meant to trigger a reaction in me. You're one of those shades of violet that intuitively mean "cool! read their post!" to me. I'll probably keep it that way. The only problem with that is you're the same shade of violet I used for dr_memory (in his case, some sort of purple was mandatory, of course :). Now that I have a lot more choices, I'll probably edit one or the other of you to give you slightly different background colors.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Because it's mauve, and dangerous!

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

But my hair color is in a constant state of change, sort of a sawtooth function of purple.

[cos]

I think I picked a good median. And the background is a light gray.

[blk]

This is such a cool thing. I skimmed over your post when I first saw it, but then I went back and started making use of the feature, and now my friends page looks so much more fitting to the people it is showing!

What color am I? :)

[cos]

I have to think about it. You're one of the people I added during the few months when LJ removed colors from add/modify friend altogether (apparently their new usability person thought having the color choices there degraded usability!). So you're the default black on white.

When I know someone well, I usually have a color associated with them in my head. When I don't, I often just think of their hair color, or the clothes I first saw them in :)

[drwex]

Note that the concept of "web safe" color is completely meaningless and has been for at least 5-6 years. Thus spake the Web designer.

[cos]

I put it at about 3-4 years, and I know there are still browsers & computers around from the era when it mattered. I run into them in low tech households from time to time even now. When it does reach 6 years, then I think it'll be "completely" meaningless.

[kirin]

Huh... for a moment I was wondering whether this was a paid account feature, because I couldn't find it. I was looking on the "Edit Friends" page since that's always been how I've managed my friends list, but it still shows the old 46-color options. I then realized I could get it by modifying the link you provided to point to other users, but was still puzzled as to how to actually navigate there from the LJ interface until I eventually found it in the "add friend" link of other users' info pages. Huh. I've never actually added a friend that way.

I suppose if I were feeling ambitious I'd suggest to LJ that they add either an interface or some links to the Edit Friends page, but I should really be getting back to work.

On a tangential note, I currently have my friends colored by group... it would be an interesting feature to let you explicitly apply colors en-masse to a friends group. If you wanted to get really fancy you could even make it so that people in multiple groups got interpolated...

[cos]

There's something for suggestions! :)