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<META name="Keywords" content="color, colors, hex color, hex value, color chooser">
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The Color chooser
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The color chooser is a nice tool to help you choosing and editing colors in your HTML document.
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Choosing a color
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Since HTML uses the hex system to precisely describe colors, you may find it difficult to enter a color that is different from pure combinations, such as #FF0000 or #AAAAAA. HTML also supports color names, but who can remember names like Lightgoldenroyellow and associate the right color with it? If you use CreaText's color chooser, don't worry about such details.<BR>
First, of course, open it. You can do this by clicking the color chooser button in the main window or choose the menu entry from the Web menu (Command-Option-C). Additionally, every dialog in which you can define one or more colors supports the color chooser. You should see this:<BR>
On the left top, you see the RGB values of the current colors. They represent the three color values (red, green, blue) each color has and instead of the hex system they use the decimal system. To edit them, you can change the values by entering a new number with your keyboard, use the arrows or use the slider. The minimum number for each is 0, and the maximum is 255. That means 256*256*256 (or 256<SUP>3</SUP>) = 16.7 million different colors. That should be enough.<BR>
On the right top, you see the HSV values of the current color. They represent the hue, saturation and value (or brightness) values the color has. Their value is determined by a number between 0 and 1, e.g. 0.123. This is useful when you don't want to change the color but, e.g., have it darker. This color system is adopted from how the human eye sees colors. The RGB system is equal to how the computer displays colors.<BR>
Below this there are another three entries:
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<LI><B>Color names</B><BR>
This one lists all HTML color names (from 'Aliceblue' to 'Yellowgreen'). When you select a color name, its corresponding RGB, HSV and HTML values as well as the color preview will be shown.</LI>
<LI><B>Apple Color Picker button</B><BR>
When you push this button, the Apple Color Picker will be shown. How this one does look depends on the version of your MacOS. The advantage of the Apple Color Picker is that it can use the option to only choose web-safe colors, which consist of 216 colors which are equal on every computer platform.
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<LI><B>HTML text field</B><BR>
The HTML (or hex) value for the current color is displayed in this field. This is the value the color chooser will insert if you push the Insert button. You can also manually change it.
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At the very bottom, you see how the current color will look like. <BR>
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Editing colors
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There's a nice way you can use the color chooser to edit colors in your document. For example, you have a <<FONT color="blue">BODY</FONT>> tag with the bgcolor set to "Cornflowerblue". Maybe you don't know how this color looks like or you want it darker (or whatever). Use the mouse to select the color in the main window. Then open the color chooser. Now it should look like this:<BR>
As you can see, the color chooser checks if there is some text selected in the main window and tries to analyze it so you can directly edit it. The color chooser understands hex formatted colors and color names, as shown in the example above.
