Color Aliases in CSS

[Quiet Desperation]

It's be nice to be able to define color aliases in CSS.

For example, I could have something like this:

alias primary_color #0080ff
alias secondary_color #00ff00
alias highlight_color #ffff00

and so on

And in subsequent style classes/ids you'd have:

....
color: primary_color;
....

....
background-color: secondary_color;
....

....
border-color: highlight_color;
....

and so on.

Just some sort of easy way to maintain a sitewide color scheme.

Just pondering.

Is there an existing easy method of maintaining web site colors in one
spot?

[Nik Coughlin]

Quiet Desperation wrote:

It's be nice to be able to define color aliases in CSS.

Just some sort of easy way to maintain a sitewide color scheme.

Just pondering.

Is there an existing easy method of maintaining web site colors in one
spot?

Server side processing

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Quiet Desperation:

It's be nice to be able to define color aliases in CSS.

I think you mean that it _would be_ nice.

Is there an existing easy method of maintaining web site colors in one
spot?

In CSS, there is no way to define new symbols. Whether you can do such
things outside CSS depends on your authoring environment.

You can, however, organize CSS rules so that colors of different elements
are defined together. For example,

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h7 { color: #060; background: #ffe; }

instead of separate rules for h1, h2, etc.

This is one reason for ordering a style sheet by properties rather than by
elements. That is, you would e.g. first have all the color and background
settings for all elements, then all the border settings, then all padding
settings, etc. This makes it more difficult to check quickly what you are
setting for each element, though.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[David Dorward]

On Jun 20, 5:39 am, Quiet Desperation <[e-mail]:

Is there an existing easy method of maintaining web site colors in one
spot?

http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/inheritance/

[Manuel Collado]

David Dorward escribió:

On Jun 20, 5:39 am, Quiet Desperation <[e-mail]:

>>Is there an existing easy method of maintaining web site colors in one
spot?

http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/inheritance/

The 'Preprocessor' hint of the above reference can be implemented with
any general purpose macro-processor. By using 'm4' the original example
will look like:

-------color_aliases.m4 --------------
define(`primary_color', `#0080ff')
define(`secondary_color', `#00ff00')
define(`highlight_color', `#ffff00')
....
color: primary_color;
....
background-color: secondary_color;
....
border-color: highlight_color;
....
---------------------------------------

It can be processed as:

....m4 color_aliases.m4

....
color: #0080ff;
....
background-color: #00ff00;
....
border-color: #ffff00;
....
Regards.
--
Manuel Collado - http://lml.ls.fi.upm.es/~mcollado

[bugbear]

Manuel Collado wrote:

David Dorward escribió:

>On Jun 20, 5:39 am, Quiet Desperation <[e-mail]:

>>Is there an existing easy method of maintaining web site colors in one
spot?

http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/inheritance/

The 'Preprocessor' hint of the above reference can be implemented with
any general purpose macro-processor. By using 'm4' the original example
will look like:

Hey! I thought I was the only one m4'ing
my CSS!

I was particularly pleased with these:

define(`notMacIE5',`/* Commented Backslash Hack hides rule from IE5-Mac \*/
$1
/* End IE5-Mac hack */')

define(`onlyWinIE6', `notMacIE5(`* html $1')')

define(`peekabooFix',`onlyWinIE6(`$1 { height: 1%; }')')

Which allow me to do things like:

notMacIE5(`#header a {float:none;}')

and

peekabooFix(.dialog .content)

BugBear

[Quiet Desperation]

In article <46********@news.upm.es>,

define(`primary_color', `#0080ff')
define(`secondary_color', `#00ff00')
define(`highlight_color', `#ffff00')

Mmm. Nice, but this is a case where I have limited server side access.
I'm just a hobbyist. I've considered a small program that would take my
site files with custom tokens for colors, and copy them with the correct
hex codes inserted. Sort of a "designer side" script. :)

I've also been mucking about with various combiners but I wind up with
something that, to be honest, is litle better than a CSS-ized version of
the old FONT tags.

[David Dorward]

On Jun 21, 4:48 am, Quiet Desperation <[e-mail]:

Mmm. Nice, but this is a case where I have limited server side access.

So do your preprocessing as part of your publication process, rather
then on-demand every time the file is requested.

--
David Dorward
http://dorward.me.uk/
http://blog.dorward.me.uk/

[Roedy Green]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:39:51 -0700, Quiet Desperation <[e-mail],
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :

>alias primary_color #0080ff
alias secondary_color #00ff00
alias highlight_color #ffff00

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/htmlstaticmacros.html
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

[Quiet Desperation]

In article <11**********************@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups .com>,
David Dorward <do*****@gmail.comwrote:

On Jun 21, 4:48 am, Quiet Desperation <[e-mail]:

Mmm. Nice, but this is a case where I have limited server side access.

So do your preprocessing as part of your publication process, rather
then on-demand every time the file is requested.

Exactly. I use Mac OS X so I can use a Perl script or something.