web notes - a blog

The color mapper is still evolving. The biggest change was to key off the ‘#’ character, followed by a digit or hex letter instead of the word ‘color’. This allows all borders and backgrounds to be captured.

Interesting options:

• Manually type in color codes in the image text area, with the color:#333333 syntax
• Remove undesired codes from images
• Edit screen shots to capture only those colors you want to use on the skin

Planned improvements:

• Continued testing :)
• Palette chooser, to allow you to pick colors to apply

Acknowledgement:

I’m sure someone else has developed a color mapper, one that is probably much more sophisticated. If it hasn’t already been done, it will be done soon.

Skin this blog with colors from your own (.gif) image.

:)

The associated link accepts a .gif file and lists the colors, in CSS color syntax, as well as a table to see them.

White (#FFFFFF) is displayed on a black background.

This is the first pass at generating CSS maps from .gifs.

Stay tuned … but loosely.

Many web companies use a common, core set of javascript libraries and applications which use hierarchical CSS architectures.

If the live server is used for development (which is a very cost-effective approach), thousands of requests are made for the same files.

To reduce this, common components can be sourced from a single point, which the HTTP headers set to cache them with far-future expire dates.

In addition to reducing bandwidth consumption during the development phase, it also reduces it for live sites.

If there are related sites on the same server - the benefit is extended.

This is a small CDN (content delivery network), which allows distribution of customized files for a company, or custom code. It also simplifies management of the common code core, since updates only have to be made to one file.

This saves disk space as well, and speeds page loads.

If there is an issue with having content from a different URL, rewrite rules can be used to hide the true source of the files, while retaining the advantages of a single source.

With additional creative configuration, an application can be used to support multiple accounts. This is riskier, and I don’t recommend it - unless you can be sure you will never change the application. I would try it with this blog software (b2evolution), because from what I’ve seen - it would be very successful.

If you would like to have a comment posted on this blog, please send me an email and I will post your text - without posting any identifying data.

I have had bad luck with hackers and closed comments for that reason.