4.0 Feature Request: customize the text color palette

[Eric Allione]

>IPS blog: "The buttons that appear on the toolbar are completely customisable in 4.0 and you can set different layouts for desktop, tablet and mobile."

Please let us take this a step further and customize the actual text colors which can be picked upfront, directly editing colors in this primary grid with better-contrasting hex values. Yes, there is a "more colors" option, but many don't see it. All we would need to have is an "anchor name" for each replaced color; out of lack of imagination, we might get away with blue2 and blue3 etc. Of course, it would be best if admin can set the permissions for this feature.

This request is in response to a couple of problems:

1) Most users don't understand how to manipulate colors with hexadecimals.

a) Low-level work like that shouldn't be part of the posting experience anyway.

2) There are 40 colors in the palette but for any given skin but only about 10 contrast well.

a) They can still be ugly if they contrast well.

3) Users don't always pay attention to logical contrast.

4) Most users don't see the "more colors" option, they just try to pick a color that's right in front of them.

With some trial and error from the site admin within the spectrum of contrast-friendly colors, a large variety of usable colors can be selected: all of them contrasting well with the main skin.

The bottom line is that it is simply embarrassing to represent a forum which offers so many colors that are completely unusable. Examples: Azure, Yellow, Honeydew, Lavender Blush, Alice Blue, Antique White, or Light Yellow. The worst damage from this usually isn't from obvious non-choices like white but from ones that just barely do not work and that might be deemed as cute like: Pale turquoise, Cyan, or maybe Lime. These will still burn your eyes on all but the dimmest monitors and create extra janitorial work for admin.

But someone might ask, "I have multiple skins, how would this work for all of them?" Steve00 has provided an excellent solution for this:

.post_body .post span {
color: green !important;
} 

All you do is put that code in the ipb_styles.css of your secondary skin(s), and it will guarantee that all colors used for emphasis will be translated into your chosen alternate text color for that skin. Just replace 'green' with the ideal hex value.

This solutions seems well within the capabilities of the IPS team, shouldn't take too long to code, and being optional I can't imagine why anyone would be against it. Although I do not see a downside in this, I will still put a public poll up so that people seeing another side of this can voice their opinions.

PS. If anyone can suggest how to hardcode these changes myself, then please offer some guidance. I am not able to use "Inspect Element" on the rich editor, so I have no idea where to begin. Thanks.

[Mark]

The code that builds it in 3.x is in /public/3rd_party/ckeditor/plugins/colordialog/dialogs/dialog.js.

It's currently a little difficult to configure this as the code defines base colors and then works out the shades automatically. In 4.x, the new version of CKEditor that we're using just defines the hex values, so it's much easier to configure.

[Eric Allione]

If I understand what you mean correctly about just defining the hex values, then it sounds like you will be jumping straight to the "more colors screen":

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That would certainly be better than the intermediary smaller-palette color summary that we get in 3.x. It would still be better to have a "favorite colors" palette that admin can predefine because looking at a giant hex chooser can be a bit overwhelming. But still, what you say sounds like an improvement. Thanks for putting so much work into generation 4. We're all excited about it.

Shameless tangent in before the close: Please let us customize the cell sizes in tables too so we can integrate pictures well with text.