Genii Weblog
The color of money is different on the web
Fri 17 Jul 2009, 06:35 PM
Tweetby Ben Langhinrichs
IBM has a bit of a reputation for doing things their own way, but it seems more than a bit ironic that they don't know that the color of money is different on the web (at least the color of the US dollar). In Notes, there are sixteen "basic" colors, including two which are identified as "green" and "darkgreen". They are identified as such in documentation, as well as in constants and such in the API. Therefore, it probably shouldn't surprise me (but, yes, it still does!) that IBM identifies its "green" as "green" in email. The problem being that what IBM thinks of as "green" is considered "lime" on the web, RGB 0,255,0 or #00ff00. Still, while that confusion might be excusable, the confusion IBM has between its own "green" and "darkgreen" is less so.
Below is a table, with HTML's "lime", IBM's "green", on the left and HTML's "green", IBM's "darkgreen", on the right. I even included a bit of the screen print of the color chooser which shows the RGB color as well as the color itself.
Below is the same table sent to Gmail. At first, I thought this might be a Gmail bug, but it is rendering the HTML colors properly. Note that the colors on the left and right are exactly the same! It is IBM which doesn't understand that the color of money (at least here in the United States) is different on the web.
I should note that this is a bug in the Notes client rendering on Notes 8. The Domino server rendering does what it should (with the colors at least) and uses the hex number value all the time.
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