Help talk:Using colours

message: List of things that are pertinent, but not suitable for the guideline page itself. --Quiddity 20:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interesting external links 

message: How come the colours used in the little box that pops up and says your talk page has been edited aren't included in this article. Philc TECI 22:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are hundreds of colours used in the various infoboxes, that arent listed here. Just look at the wiki code to see what colour is being used :) -Quiddity 23:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, I just thought it was pretty central to wikipedia, and maybe it had been omitted by mistake. Philc TECI 23:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk box colours 

message: Important are IMO some technical facts:
#Most browsers use dark foreground colours, typically black for text, underlined blue for links, and a slightly different underlined blue for visited links. 
#That's also the case for old browsers not supporting CSS. Therefore changing the background colour is tricky:
#Dark background colours are out - unless the foreground colour is also changed. Ideally checked with a service converting all colours to a black and white scheme, if it still works it should be fine also for the colourblind.
#Mixing legacy markup and CSS can have hilarious effects like a legacy black/blue foreground on a dark background, if editors use  for the BG, and  for the FG. 
#Using a legacy  is deprecated. Violating that rule is an option, otherwise better don't use legacy markup for dark backgrounds. 
#Outside of CSS stay away from the hex.  notation, old browsers only know  (six hex. digits). Maybe use one of the sixteen colour names, that's guaranteed to work on the most limited devices, cell-phones, PDAs, printers, whatever, as far as they support colours.
#Text browsers don't support colours. (They need them internally to display mixtures of italics / bold / etc. and logical style tags like  on text mode displays with a single monospaced font). 
#XHTML basic and XHTML print don't support inline CSS. If available use  references to an external style sheet, for links see Wikipedia:Customisation.
#See also my experimental page with links to a colourblind emulator. The interesting table above has no effect on legacy browsers (and often no effect is good news from my POV... ;-) -- Omniplex 15:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Additions needed

message: This section seems to be a bit abrupt to be added without discussion. On what basis are these colors "allowed," implying others are "disallowed"? The list doesn't seem to be all that consistent with the HSB/HSV style of designating color palettes either. Rfrisbietalk 04:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Really how many accepted colors are there?  ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 12:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allowed colors? 

message: In the See Also section, the page "Infobox Colors" appears to be INACTIVE, whereas the "WikiProject Usability/Color" page appears to be ACTIVE.  Should their designations on this page be changed or am I missing something? Newbie Laurie Fox 06:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Both are historical/inactive. I've updated accordingly. (this page has been inactive a while too, needs help.. Usability/Color should be merged here, plus the list of items above..) --Quiddity 20:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  active / inactive? 

message: The article was created as Wikipedia:Colours and per WP:ENGVAR should remain there.  I've move protected it at that location because of the recent move wars (which resulted in lots of double redirects).  Moves can still be discussed here, of course.  violet/riga (t) 10:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page name 

message: How come the templates now have their color in a little bar to the side? And do these colors mean anything?--190.74.108.43 (talk) 20:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Which templates? -- Quiddity (talk) 21:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: trivia (yellow), globalize (blue), advert (red)... that kind of templates.--190.74.108.43 (talk) 21:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:Article message boxes. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you!--190.74.108.43 (talk) 22:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  template colors 

message: Since tables are the general way to present structured information, and presentation of structured information is often assisted by colors, I'm a bit surprised there is not more table-specific information and guidance here.
It seems especially odd that there is no information about the choice of colors in class=wikitable (#f9f9f9 for background, #f2f2f2 for headings). When I needed a third color for a table heading a while ago (in :List of motion picture film stocks), I ended up choosing #ebebeb since it was 7 less than #f2f2f2 which was 7 less than #f9f9f9; but I was not aware of this page at that time. How were the table colors chosen?
Is there any guidance on colors to use within tables?
jhawkinson (talk) 15:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colors in tables 

message: In addition to presenting the colours employed in the various title boxes, shouldn't mention be made of the Wikipedia's page background colour itself (#F8FCFF)? JGHowestalk -  01:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia background colour 

message: Please see Template talk:Infobox Country#Wales country specific infobox 52 Pickup (deal) 07:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Since this was not resolved, I've set up a RFC: link - 52 Pickup (deal) 21:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox colours as a customisable option, and its implications 

message: I there anything wrong with the use of colour in this article? BUC (talk) 17:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The article seems fine. The Template:Denver Broncos has some hard-to-read colour contrasts though. The orange-on-blue in the title, and the black-on-orange in the groupheadings, should probably be changed. (And the title should be linked to Denver Broncos). I'd suggest the standard navbox colour schemes (or those found in , perhaps), but any sort of dark-text-on-a-light-background is universally recommendable. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There were some concerns about colour being the only indicator though. Can see you see anywhere where that is an issue? BUC (talk) 19:23, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can tell, everything appears to be properly-redundantly labeled. However, I don't know the game at all, so I'm confused by a number of things. You might get more help by inquiring in this recent thread: Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Use of colour to convey information. Sorry I wasn't more help. (also, at the article, footnote:g seems to be broken, but I couldn't see anything obviously wrong?). -- Quiddity (talk) 23:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just checking 

message: An article I do occasional work on, Virginia House of Delegates, just had a large table recoded to indicate political party preference via a background color templates, Template:Party shading/Democratic and Template:Party shading/Republican. This has led to a rather large number of links, blue and red, sitting on backgrounds of #B0CEFF and #FFB6B6. This appears to be a spreading usage in US political articles. Is it just me, or is there a serious contrast problem with this mix of red or blue text on red or blue backgrounds? Rklear (talk) 01:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political background templates behind links 

message: I added: WP:Don't edit war over the colour of templates to the see also section, after seeing this:
*Template:Infobox_NFLactive a huge RfC over the color of templates. Ikip (talk) 10:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:Don't edit war over the colour of templates]] 

message: You are right, Quiddity. This is both a Web usability and Web accessibility issue, here is a review of West Rail Line. Dodoïste (talk) 12:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Wonderfully clearly explained. Thank you for that work. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accessibility and ergonomy review 

message: On Wikipedia, every link is blue. Therefore, everything that is not blue is not a link. It is very confusing for the user, so please do not change the color of the links (and same goes for text: text is black). 
Each kind of content has a specific color. New colors should only be used to indicate a new kind of interactive content.
 Good and bad example of color use
Bad usability	Good usability

West Rail Line
	

West Rail Line

West Rail Line	
West Rail Line
</div>
Dodoïste (talk) 12:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Wonderfully clearly explained. Thank you for that work. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ergonomy review 

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Beland (talk) 20:55, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Templates for deletion|Templates for deletion]] nomination of [[:Template:Overcoloured]] 

message: Pretty much done, except for the page move. This project page has been move protected since 2007, so I can't change move it.
Please move the page to Wikipedia:Using Colors and/or Wikipedia:Using Colours (I don't personally care which, "Colors" is simply the spelling that I don't have to think about at all).— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 18:38, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, why do we need this page move? Isn't it better to keep the more concise title? Ucucha 21:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really, because the page now is a How-to rather then being a guideline and How-to combined. The current name of this page should really redirect to Wikipedia:Accessibility#color, where the guideline content has been moved. Since this page is now only the how-to content it seems to me that the name should reflect that.— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:24, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Done. I also removed the move protection; I'll re-add it when people see fit to move it to American spelling again. Ucucha 22:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Done

message: Hello, how can we color an entire column in a table please ? Polylepsis (talk) 13:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Table color help

message: Would it make sense to move this page to Help:Using Colours?  The current page contents seem more like the pages in the Help namespace than the Wikipedia namespace. –Grondemar 23:07, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks fine, Arbitrarily0 (talk) 17:03, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move to Help namespace? 

message: Given WP:CONLIMITED, to what extent and under what circumstances can individual WikiProjects and users customize article appearance with individual styles that deviate from site-wide style guidelines? Interested contributors are invited to participate at Wikipedia talk:Consensus/RfC. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC on [[Consensus]] 

message: I strongly suggest to put the #Colour generation guide from here into thee Help-page. Very good & useful, explaining right what the color scheme are & should do .(Well, maybe change into "Color", all these English on this wiki ;-).) Also, the top-page table could be there. -DePiep (talk) 00:02, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Tables from Talk to the Help-page

message: take a look at this. IMO there could be massive improvements in the use of color but i'm not really sure how to proceed. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1  | talk2me 20:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  help required at X Factor (uk series 6) 

message: A newly developed template has been launched, and it helps catalogue life using a color scheme. Please place comments regarding its color at Template talk:Taxobox colour#Veterovata. Thanks! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs)  22:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for comment RE: a new color being added to a series of color identifiers 

message: Does anyone know how to change colours of your username or the 'talk' sign that appears after I post my comment? OldstoneJames C 18:10, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:SIG#CustomSig. The software imposes a limit of 255 characters, so you'll have to simplify the HTML code that you've used here. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk pages and usernames 

message: I want to change my username,and the colour with it as I've seen it by some users.Can anyone tell me how it's done?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nixious6 (talk • contribs) 19:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The colored usernames you see are caused by custom signatures, and are not hardcoded into the username themselves. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 20:53, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  How do I change my username colour 

message: I am looking at the table in List of wind farms in South Australia and undoubtedly similar tables in many other places. It has coloured backgrounds for the status column with text values of , , , , . I have recently added . I made up the new colour as I could not find a guide on whether there is a standard set I should have chosen from. Thank you. --Scott Davis Talk 07:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a Wikipedia standard for using colours for status in tables 

message: Another editor asked at the help desk about printing table colors.  He noticed they don't render with print previews, and I noticed that you can't save them using the PDF download function either.  Is there a way to do this? TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 21:54, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Printing table colors 

message: * 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
* Aftermath of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
* Angles
* Antipodes
* Battle of Tripoli (2011)
* Blu-ray
* Catholic Church by country
* Central Time Zone
* Civil union
* Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
* List of parties to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
* Crystallographic database
* De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
* Detroit
* Dutch language
* Dutch Language Union
* 2011 Germany E. coli O104:H4 outbreak
* Embassy of the United States, Baghdad
* Gameplay of Pokémon
* Pokémon competitive play
* Human brain
* Human overpopulation
* IAU definition of planet
* Interior (topology)
* Internet Explorer
* Interstate Highway System
* Interval arithmetic
* Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego
* Latin Empire
* List of countries by system of government
* List of transcontinental countries
* List of New Testament papyri
* Long and short scales
* Minkowski addition
* Talk:Motion picture content rating system/Archive 2
* Necklace (combinatorics)
* New Imperialism
* Old English
* Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
* Otago
* Protestantism by country
* Religions by country
* Religious information by country
* Cecil Rhodes
* Schmallenberg virus
* Scramble for Africa
* Legal status of same-sex marriage
* T42 (classification)
* T43 (classification)
* T44 (classification)
* Television in the United Kingdom
* Wason selection task
* Wellington, Shropshire
I have made the above list as the category is about to be deleted, see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_May_8. It may be useful to add one or more new templates and categories to tag specific images and tables that need improvement. someone may want to check and tick off the above list. – Fayenatic London 17:41, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pages in [[:Category:Articles with images not understandable by color blind users]] 

message: Just for an example, I'm adding a Template:Digital clock and date to my User page (still in sandbox at this phase). I'm changing it from a plastic white appearance to one that matches the default color scheme of other elements on my page, e.g. TOC, Archives box, and Wikitable. It would be handy if this default color scheme was defined on this page, but Wikipedia is under § Wikimedia, and the color scheme shown does not match the templates and tables I've just described. — Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 21:52, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. Also, what? This page isn't semi-protected, and I have no idea what you're talking about (so if the page was semi-protected I would decline as XY most likely.) casualdejekyll 23:44, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Default Wikipedia template and table colors 

message: Wikipedia's servers are based in Florida, so why is this in British English? Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 12:09, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: British English

message: I was scouring the internet for a helpful guide to inclusive color palettes and ran across this blog. It appears to do a deep-dive into color-blindness and the palettes the author creates are also shown in the way that people with specific types of color-blindness would see them. Lindsey40186 (talk) 13:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Helpful tool/guide 

message: Most live in America, and the American English page redirects here. My last resort was to use a profanity filter for translation. Orrinpants (talk) 15:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  No American English 

message: Help:Using colours#Colour generation guide
The 3 colours are generated using the HSV colour space, then translated into RGB.
HSV is one of several representations of the sRGB color space. All RGB spaces are based upon the technology, not human perception, therefore linear gradients therein do not appear uniform, for instance. Other color spaces have been devised that focus on how human eyes and brain see colors. A popular one is CIELAB (with various variants and representations) and a rather recent improvement on that is OKLab, which can be represented by lightness, chroma and hue as well.
I propose to change the Colour Generation Guide to use OK… with the same hues in 10° (or 15° or 30°) steps as for HSV, but I’m not sure yet which systematic L and C values should be chosen to get similar colors to the ones currently suggested. (The values in the table below are very preliminary.) 
                      	main background	2nd header, accent colour	main border, header background	header border only
HSV Saturation        	4%             	10%                      	15%                           	15%
HSV Brightness (Value)	100%           	100%                     	95%                           	75%
OK Lightness          	98%            	98%                      	90%                           	75%
OK Chroma             	1%             	3%                       	5%                            	3%
The end result could be converted back to sRGB hex values, because most authors (who’ll copy entries from this table) are more familiar with them, although some preferable colors might be outside the sRGB gamut. — Christoph Päper 15:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Switch Color Generation Guide to OKLCh