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Comment by dudeinjapan

2 days ago

The site doesn't explain--what's the actual point of this? If we are seriously concerned about characters (which is generally silly in a gzipped CSS) why not just use 3-char hex like #a5c?

Avoiding analysis paralysis, making it more intuitive to manually write colors. But yeah, there doesn't seem to be any advantage over the well-established #ABC format than decimal digits being easier to non-techies.

author here. the site does explain that

  • > Splash colours can help you avoid decision paralysis when picking colours. It's an emotional tool that stops you fussing around— trying to pick the "perfect" colour.

    OK I missed this. The intro paragraph explains "what" not "why". As this "why" is not immediately obvious (nor is something I've ever considered a "problem"), would suggest to put something short in the intro.

No, TFA does very deliberately and openly explain what the goal/justification is:

> Splash colours can help you avoid decision paralysis when picking colours. It's an emotional tool that stops you fussing around— trying to pick the "perfect" colour … It also means the user can deal with discrete / individual colour values in the drag-and-drop user interface. They don't have to deal with large numbers at all. Only one to nine

  • Ah so let’s avoid analysis paralysis by having only black, as Ford famously ruled for the Model T.

    Of course that’s a reductio ad absurdum, but it’s also completely arbitrary to maintain that fewer options is better. The opposite is also equally arbitrary.