> The color was originally going to be called beccapurple, but Meyer asked that it instead be named rebeccapurple, as his daughter had wanted to be called Rebecca once she had turned six. She had said that Becca was a "baby name," and that once she had turned six, she wanted to be called Rebecca. As Eric Meyer put it, "She made it to six. For almost twelve hours, she was six. So Rebecca it is and must be."
I'm sobbing like a baby while my 5yo twins are watching TV nearby. That is such a 5-going-on-6 decision to make, which just drives the whole thing home for me and I can't handle it right now.
I've always loved the existence of "rebeccapurple", but I somehow missed that part of the story. Her color being immortalized in the CSS logo (even if it changes years from now) is so incredibly beautiful to me.
Not to mention, we have a bunch of names that are just jokes, bad puns, random references, or idle wordplay.
C# is named because it’s a step up from C++, which is one better than C, which is the next thing after B.
Python is just an arbitrarily chosen name referencing a comedy troupe.
Linux is Linus’s copy of Minix, which is a minimal Unix, which is based off of Multics, which is a pseudo-initialism.
We have names honoring the dead; Pascal, Ada, Darwin.
We can name one color in one spec in honor of one person’s dead child.
It is neither a burden nor out of character for the field. If you genuinely believe it is a problem, I ask that you step back and reflect on why you truly believe it is.
It quite reminds me of Richard Stallman's reply on an email list asking people to refrain from posting about the birth of a baby on a technical mailing list.
I'm not sure it's fair for me to comment on "the ethos of this community," but I remember when rebeccapurple was added to the spec and there were commenters here bemoaning adding complexity to the spec for no benefit.
I'll say "You will find more than zero people here who don't really seem to consider humanity and tech overlapping domains."
I’m sorry that it seems this comment was dinged. It was (in my opinion) a reasonable one, and not delivered in an attack fashion.
I can only speak for myself, but I inject a great deal of “humanity” into my technical work.
I write software that Serves a pretty marginalized and sidelined demographic. Not many folks are willing to do the type of work that I do.
I certainly don’t do it for the kudos. I don’t think most of the folks here, would care, and some, might actually hate me for doing the work.
I do it, because I actually have a personal stake in the work, and because I care -deeply- about the people that use my software. Whenever I design an app, I keep in mind the folks that use it, and ensure that it delivers something that they need (not what I think they need; what they actually need). My work is informed by a mental model that I have, imagining the software being used by people, not by it projecting my brand, making money (it’s free), or salving personal insecurities.
I’m quite aware that this is not the norm, in the industry, but I have worked for companies that kept a laser focus on the end-user experience, which involves a great deal of “getting into their heads.”
Everytime I see the content dissappear from being flagged and moderated away, I feel poorer and wonder what it was that I can no longer be allowed to read. How aggressively should messages be moderated on HN? After I had myself been unreasonably sensored in other discussions, this very active moderation is giving me serious concerns about HN. Robot spam should be moderated, or illegal things, but do we really need edgy comments hidden from view? I've seen a lot of magnanimous, wise and empathic responses on some otherwise cutting comments, a lot of goodwill here on HN. Do we really need the heavy hand of censors to protect us from offensive speech???
If you want to see comments from trolls, bigots, and shadowbanned users turn the showdead option on. I have it turned on and maybe 1% of comments are worth vouching for.
I keep mine off, because, for the most part, I don't mind not seeing the trolls.
In this case, the chap made a point that many people (including myself) disagree with, but in a fashion that I think is right in line with the way we should deal with each other.
I just think people downvote posts they disagree with, or because they have some animus with the poster (I have a couple of downvote stalkers, myself, and it's sometimes amusing to see which posts they hit).
It’s not censors. It’s fellow users collectively voting on what we want in our community and what we don’t. (Didn’t downvote or flag it as it was dead when I got here)
I did not consider your comment to be an attack in any way.
My issue boils down to some completely wanting to change IT terminology because of "emotions" which happens because people do not consider the context in which it is embedded.
> Recently, we renamed the "master" branch to "main," which was seen by some as a step toward inclusivity. But does this truly contribute to meaningful progress?
In that case, probably not since the world master has multiple meanings. However, as you noted, it is common to use master/slave terminology in the hardware world. That terminology is definitely problematic because we are humans. We are affected by human history and we are affected by social constructs. Something similar can be said about killing processes. It is also worth noting that people noticed that terminology was problematic long before the current social environment, probably because it affects a much broader range of the population. (For example: I don't see that terminology used much outside of Unix.)
The terminology itself is not inherently problematic; it is essential for us, as humans (as you noted), to be capable of compartmentalizing and recognizing the context in which terms are used. Language often carries multiple meanings, and our ability to discern the appropriate meaning within a specific context is a critical cognitive skill.
Neutralizing a term or altering it solely for the sake of political correctness (or whatever you may call it) is not the most effective approach when dealing with terminology that has long-standing and widespread usage. Such changes can create unnecessary confusion, disrupt established workflows, and detract from efforts to address more impactful systemic issues. Instead, fostering education and promoting contextual understanding can better equip individuals to interpret terms appropriately without discarding their historical or technical significance.
> Something similar can be said about killing processes. It is also worth noting that people noticed that terminology was problematic long before the current social environment, probably because it affects a much broader range of the population.
People should ideally not be affected by such terminology, as it is clearly used within a technical context with no intention of causing harm or evoking negative connotations[1]. The phrase "killing processes" for example, is a metaphorical term that accurately describes terminating a running operation in computing. Allowing neutral, domain-specific terminology to become a source of offense risks overextending sensitivity and detracts from the importance of addressing genuinely harmful language or actions in broader societal contexts. As I have previously mentioned, fostering an understanding of the technical intent behind such terms can help mitigate unnecessary emotional responses.
Altering long-standing and widespread technical terminology for perceived correctness is often futile, as individuals who lack contextual understanding or are overly sensitive could potentially take offense at ANY TERM. If anything, we should focus on education and promoting linguistic contextualization that ensures terms are understood within their intended meaning, preserving clarity, historical significance, and functionality.
[1] master/slave terminology has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, for example.
I agree with not switching from "master" to "main" in git branch parliance. (The music industry didn't stop "mastering" albums, with good reason -- it's a technical term that refers to technical authority, which is a concept worth keeping.)
But I don't think this thread is the place for such a discussion. Technical authority and "woke" culture arguments are one thing, but we're talking here about honoring Erie Meier (a seminal figure in CSS history) and his daughter by adding a named color (basically an alias) to CSS and using it in the logo. That's worth doing simply out of love and honor for Eric, his wife and family, and his daughter.
Not even this. There's no "logical" argument against it. The CSS color names are largely arbitrary and always have been (e.g. "indigo" is a shade of purple, when IRL indigo is the plant that produces the dye for blue jeans). Color names in general have been arbitrary since long before Newton coined ROYGBIV and decided to use "blue" to mean what we call "cyan" today.
It's an attitude that presumes that we can apply logic to all walks of life, which ironically is an inherently illogical stance.
Yeah, that's the main oversight of the OP that makes them look silly.
There was no logic to the naming scheme. It was all arbitrary, and the names came in waves from various sources like house paint colors, Crayolas, and the whims of people behind various implementations.
If they replaced '#663399' with 'rebeccapurple' maybe they'd have a point.
I mostly agree, but not for code lexical choices. The comment obviously lacks empathy and would be better unsung another tone and not words like graveyard.
Names are easier to learn and remember when universal. We know memorization works with associations and Chocolate, PaleTurquoise and Aqua are great for that. Chartreuse and DodgerBlue aren’t. While I can personnaly relate to the first the second is totally alien. Both lacks a bit more universality IMHO.
Absolute universality isn’t achievable but I stand that is a usefull direction to head to.
I’m deeply sorry for Eric’s daughter and gratefull for his work. I’m sure there’s other ways to honor them.
PS: thanks for the HN post, now I can relate to RebeccaPurple!
I’m not sure. I think it is what makes human. The details are that what make life worth living instead just the endless turning of the cogs. Besides, if you don’t like it, just use the rgb value.
I think finding a meaningful way recognise a significant contributor in a way that doesn’t really impact anyone is something to be encouraged. I imagine that most people would use the hex code anyway and only devs/designers would see the name in their tooling.
I can’t see how to apply logic to naming a colour. It’s fundamentally a perceptual and, dare I say it, emotional process.
I also think your comment is uncharitable and tone deaf.
You look at the monstrosity that is the CSS spec(s), filled to the brim
with horrible ideas like floats, the various overcomplicated positioning
modes that no mortal can hope to ever fully understand, and undefined
behavior left and right in general. And the "bloat" you end up singling
out is... an addition to the otherwise 147 entries long color name
table.[0]
Your list includes all 140 CSS named colors, so as per CSS Color Module Level 3, it is exhaustive. Your list has duplicates which are valid because both American and British spellings are recognized, e.g. "darkgray" and "darkgrey".
If it is not limited to CSS, then you are missing X11 colors (around ~256), for example, although some overlap with CSS colors.
If interested, Gpick can serve as a starting point.
Yeah wow, I love that this is forever encoded into the standard now. A lovely tribute. It's always been one of the few CSS default colors I actually like too (alongside "cornflowerblue").
Eric Meyer's posts about his daughter's illness, and the family's lifelong process of grieving afterward, are heartbreaking. It's arresting, gripping writing. It's wonderful and awful. Hug your loved ones tight. https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...
Thank you for linking this. I read bits and pieces of this as it was happening but it never fully registered for me at 24. I'm sitting here 10 years later at 34 having lost our son at 23 weeks. His due date was this past week. It's affected me in ways that still surprise, befuddle, and sometimes scare me. I cannot even begin to fathom what he's been through; the most recent blog post has me in tears.
I have really strong memories of learning HTML, CSS, and javascript in high school, and spending time in the school library picking apart css/edge. It felt like the dawn of a new era, I was in awe of the things I saw there. I built more than a few sites trying to get my head around the complexispiral demo, and spent countless hours diving into resources I found there (like A List Apart! I will never forget the suckerfish drop-downs). This is one of the few moments I have such vivid memories of that were directly responsible me for pursuing computer engineering and ultimately going so far into UI/UX and the web. I've never written it out this explicitly but: thank you for everything, Eric.
Thank you for sharing, Eric. It’s been a few years now for me since we lost our son before I ever had the chance to meet him and I’m not sure it’s any easier. Stories like yours and that of others help us all know we’re not alone in our grief though so I encourage you to keep sharing and telling your story.
We lost our daughter a few months ago, 30 days before her due date. We decided to terminate due to a rare genetic condition.
The pain feels too strong to handle some days. I find myself in tears after some seemingly random trigger: seeing another baby in a stroller, listening to a beautiful track named "Never Known", our first daughter saying she wants to play with her friend's small sister, seeing a painting she made with her to-be sister, writing this comment etc.
I have accepted that the pain will always be there.
Thanks for sharing your story.
P.S. there are subreddits where people share similar stories
I really appreciate you sharing your story. Getting to the point of accepting the pain of the loss is a huge milestone, even when so many days feel like one step forward, two steps back. I’m deeply sorry for your loss.
A few days ago I completely broke down hearing “Daughter” by Four Tet. The triggers that don’t even make sense are the hardest. It’s really tough to hear other people having felt similar pain (nobody should have to endure it), but it’s comforting to not feel completely alone in it. Wishing the best for you and your family.
Having never had children myself, his writing moved me in a way that I struggle to comprehend. I spent my 2 hour commute reading through all of his writing on his time, and subsequent grief of his daughter, starting here: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/06/18/welcome-2/
I found this piece particularly moving, and brought me to tears:
Was just reading this on the pain of parenting in Medea by Euripides this weekend:
"Suppose that the children have grown into youth
And have turned out good, still, if God so wills it,
Death will away with your children's bodies,
And carry them off into Hades.
What is our profit, then, that for the sake of
Children the gods should pile up on mortals
After all else
This most terrible grief of all?"
This might be a topic too heavy for this venue. The thumbnail sketch is "Consult the history of human philosophy and faith and you will find people wrestling with this question ever since we could talk and write."
(Personal opinion: fairness is a human construct. The universe does not care. We are the ones who make it as fair as we can.)
Neil, there is a logic flaw in your little aphorism that seems quite telling. Since you and I are a part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, Neil, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it. Nice day, indeed
There is no evidence this person is self destructing. You've read that in. This isn't coming from Meyer. It's coming from you.
You regularly jump into threads to criticize how other people deal with their mental health challenges.
I would appreciate if you would stop. It's inappropriate. You've been asked to stop by users and by dang multiple times.
Maybe when you feel challenged by the way other people approach mental health, you should treat it as an invitation to practice rather than an invitation to criticize.
Is he self-destructing? That's a short blog post 10 years after it happened. The latest before that in Rebecca category is 3 years before that. And then he just seems to do those blog posts during birthdays.
He's doing therapy etc, what else can he be doing? Writing blog posts is also processing.
I had read about it in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186932 (or some other earlier HN submission) and had since forgotten it. I wouldn’t be surprised to forget about it again.
Not a chance. It's not just about the color rebeccapurple but the emotional relation and deep connection between the CSS new logo, the story behind that particular color and how the CSS community merged them into one.
And furthermore, I am a passionate logo designer and logo design critique.
Of course people forget things, but as the other commenter mentioned, I think you are bringing unnecessary logic to what is an emotional subject and response. Which as they say, makes you come across as a jerk while bringing no value to the conversation.
File Browser / Finder maybe, but the text inside the boxes are too small for IDE file trees.
VS Code shows "JS" in yellow text without the box, against a dark background. CSS is just a blue hash symbol. Maybe they'll change the color to rebeccapurple, but I don't think there's room for a box around the symbol.
> Update 22 Jun 14: the proposal was approved by the CSS WG and added to the CSS4 Colors module. Patches to web browsers have already happened in nightly builds. (I’m just now catching up on this after the unexpected death of Kat’s father early Saturday morning.)
Mr. Meyer certainly had a rough 2014.
Kudos to him and all his CSS contributions over the years. I hope he has been able to find some solace since then.
And I can't blame him. They say no parent should see their child die, and that's certainly true; but especially no parent should see their 6 year old child die of brain cancer. Humans are not built to withstand that.
What's that supposed to mean? Humans grew up being slaughtered by wild animals. Safe housing is an extremely recent invention and many humans still don't have it.
In case it needs stating, watching your child die in increasingly agonising pain over a year while your glimmer of hope for their survival dimishes every single day, with moments of false dawn, is a very different experience to watching your child being killed by a wild animal.
As for your imaginary hunter gatherer:
1) Yes I'm sure when a child died in agony over a prolonged period of time in hunter gatherer societies, their family was also traumatised.
2) The modern nuclear family has changed our sense of emotional attachment to our children. Whether that's good or bad is a separate discussion, but our relationship with our children is different to what it was 500 years ago, let alone 5,000 years ago.
Like Rebecca, I also like #639 - its a wonderful color. Looks great on a web-site as a solid color that you can built a palette from and the hex code is simplicity to remember. I really wish CSS had more color names - would have been great to have named, Pantone colors or another named system.
It's great that Rebecca's name will be find its ways across codebases for as long as we are using named aliases for colors in HTML/CSS.
It's nowhere near the significance of her's and Eric's story, but the piece of land where my grandfather built his home in the 1940s or 1950s has his name on it: the "Paul D. Cravens Addition". Even though that home is long since gone (in a fire) and the land is owned by someone else, every deed and building permit henceforth has his name attached it.
I used rebeccapurple a lot as well, unknowing of the touching story behind it. I coded CSS by hand (back in like 2010), and for placeholders, I used the simple colors I knew, like "green" or "blue". And "red", of course, too. But when typing "re" for "red", I noticed that it autocompletes to "rebeccapurple", which amused me, since I thought it's kind of a nonsense to have a color named like that. Over time, I used it a lot, and it became a kind of a favorite of mine.
For the record, rebeccapurple was ratified in June 2014 [0] and was added to mainstream browsers late that year [1]. I imagine it wouldn't be "web-safe" until 2015/2016 at the earliest.
(Not doubting your anecdote - Just felt like doing some sleuthing on the timeline)
That's actually later than I remember doing all that frontend work. It wasn't for production though, that's for sure, so I used it as soon as it appeared instead of my usual "red". Thanks for the clarifications.
Purple was her favorite color. #639 is shorthand for about the purplest purple you can make with RGB. Jeff Zeldman proposed the color name on Twitter and in a blog post shortly after she died, and it understandably caught on.
I imagine your submission, which you link here, wasn't included as it has no comments. I think dang posts these so people can read the comments made on other submissions.
Why does it include TS? I would never have called it a 'web technology'. A lot of people use it in their tech stack, but fortunately, the browser does not even understand it, right?
Most CSS color names were inherited from the X11 color list [1], which, in turn, sourced its colors from a weird mixture of Crayola crayons, paint samples, and idiosyncratic personal choices [2]. It's a mess.
I am in a train and I stopped reading because I was crying too much. The fact that the reminder of this story hides in plain sight, in the form of a named CSS color, makes it even more touching for some reason.
I really don’t like these logos that are boxes with text in the lower right. The post cites a “common design language” with other tech but this has to be the most low effort language imaginable.
I once saw an interview with an apparently well-known logo designer, who said something to the effect of: "When somebody sees my work and says 'that's nothing, anybody could make that', that means they instantly got the logo, understood its structure, with no distraction. That's what it's meant to do, so to me it's a compliment."
Whether that applies here is naturally subjective, but hearing that changed how I look at logo designs a bit.
I dunno, a lot of professional design these days of extreme flatness looks like stuff I’d have done in the ‘00s while developing something just to have some kind of design and structure, then everyone would see it and be like “the program’s great but of course we’ll need to get the designers on it, ha ha, programmers and design, so bad at it, am I right?”
A lot of it would still get that reaction, I think, if a programmer presented them instead of a designer, and these look to me like they’d be among them.
Eh, having worked halfway between coding and design my whole career, I'm ambivalent. Design is just one of those things that everyone is confident they have an informed opinion about, even if they've spent a lifetime total of zero seconds thinking about what the criteria for a good design should be, let alone how to apply them. I think most every designer learns early on to ignore all the "but that's just..." comments, and rightly so IMHO.
That said:
> A lot of it would still get that reaction, I think, if a programmer presented them instead of a designer, and these look to me like they’d be among them.
Weren't the logos in TFA made and voted on by programmers?
There’s a limit to that. By that token, every logo in existence could be a white square with black text on it. Clearly they are not, because people understand the need for some differentiation. Even in this case, the logos benefit from having colour.
And they’re not even consistent. Three of them are squares, two of them are different shapes, and despite the simplicity even something as trivial as the font size and spacing isn’t uniform.
I could listen to logo designers talk all day long, you pick up some many nuggets of wisdom. I've watched pretty much everything Aaron Draplin has online that you can access for free.
Logos do not exist in a vacuum, so evaluating them requires considering their context.
CSS is not a technology that needs eye-catching marketing. The existence of branding is mostly just for the purposes of giving someone something to put on a powerpoint slide, or a sticker to put on a laptop. It's allowed to be boring.
In addition, it exists as part of a family of web technologies, so giving it consistent branding with the other web technologies makes sense. You can argue that whoever first came up with this simple sort of branding was unimaginative (I think the JS logo was the first?), but just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not capable of being iconic.
The overlapping CSS suggestions had the most thumbs up, but did not seem to make it into the candidates.
They use the words vote and community, but actually taking them seriously means accepting the Boaty McBooatface when it happens.
I liked the offset logos because they served just as well as logos and were a good humoured nod towards CSS issues that it would be worthwhile keeping in mind for a bit of humility.
Not who you are replying to, but I started learning HTML/CSS right when HTML5 and CSS3 had just come out, so I do have somewhat of a soft spot for these
Yes, I've always thought they were excellent logos. Makes me nostalgic about the optimism of this time.
Also people actually use them, a while back every CS student inexplicably had these stickers on their laptop. I can't see these new logos being ever used as stickers because they're just... nothing.
As someone coming back to frontend after ten years... the optimism was justified! Writing UI code is amazing now.
Don't let the warts of the real implementation get you down, it's a delight how everything I want to do is just part of the vanilla stack now, one way or another.
I'm not even convinced that html and css need logos. Those shield logos always made me think they were trying to sell you something, which is weird for a markup language.
What is color blind unfriendly about the new logos precisely? Which variant of color blindness will not be able to read them?
Which visual impairment exactly will find it easier to parse the previous logos (which are a mess of design scarcely related to the actual technology name) than the current ones, which contain thick bold text indicating exactly what the technology is called?
> Do not rely on color alone to denote information
> Use additional cues or information to convey content
The old icons were certainly ugly. But they had a unique shape (cue) and didn't rely on color. The new logo has text which helps, but this is where visual impairment becomes an issue (lack of focus to read said text).
I have no intent to take away from the meaningful choices made in this logo's design. But even just picking a unique shape for each component would go a long way.
The old CSS and HTML logos had identical shape aside from the text. The new CSS and HTML logos have different shape (albeit subtle), larger text, and a greater difference in lightness.
While they aren't snazzy, they do have some benefits that often go unconsidered:
Logos are sometimes printed on shirts (in monochrome, or where rich coloring costs extra), or embroidered onto hats, or read at a distance (like conference booth posters), or printed to B/W official letterhead, or scaled down for an icon pack. A 3rd party will include a logo on something with a preexisting style, and it should look okay there.
A logo which is structurally simple and uses few colors can be easily adapted to these scenarios — printed in black-and-white, or as an outline without solid colors.
I don't see the problem with low-effort. It's clear and concise, while also having more character when just an un-styled word mark. This is a technology used by people who already know what it is, I would be far more annoyed with adding more complexity.
Sure, but it's good that it's low effort. We don't need fancy branding for languages. Few people will see thrm. These aren't paid products with marketing campaigns. They are just tools of the trade.
Simplicity is fine! Minimal effort is fine! But these are poorly executed. The article says the logo follows "the design language of the logos of other web technologies," but there is no design language.
The text in in random sizes and different fonts for no reason. The shapes are not all the same or all different; they are just randomly different.
It's not that any one logo looks bad; they look awful because they are _incoherent_.
Disagree, but then again my soulless engineer's heart has close to zero tolerance for design for design's sake, so what do I know?
The most important part about convoying that an item is CSS is including the letters CSS. So while I am a little disgusted they wasted time on an icon at all, I will admit that many of our design language structures demand an icon. So I am somewhat relieved they managed to dodge the design for design's sake crowd and picked the best possible one. A non-descript box with the letters CSS in it.
You're absolutely right, especially considering the canonical CSS-in-a-box logo has long been established [1], and they should really embrace it if they had any sense of humor.
Perhaps those brutalist logos were designed specifically such that they could be rendered using CSS itself?
Though I could understand why they'd want to distance themselves from the old "shield" logo that turned out to signify shielding "browser vendors" from broad implementation of CSS renderers and to keep a niche of job security at W3C, Inc. due to rampant and unwarranted complexity, but in any case was burnt by being placed next to vulgar metalhand vectors, not to speak of being culturally discriminative when viewed in a "woke" interpretation.
Without even judging the overall design (personally I don't mind the simplicity), why on earth do they use such inconsistent fonts? 3 different font sizes (and maybe also mismatching horizontal spacings) for 5 assorted logos??? This is insane...
Because they are still logos, not one list of short acronyms that just happens to be rendered in a specific way?
I really think it's fine: the web assembly gets to play with its parallels between W and A, JS gets to mirror the J's bottom-bend in its S (TS tagging along because those two really are more than just accidental neighbors), whereas CSS can indulge in summetry with its twin S by making them internally symmetric themselves. A logo that contains an acronym isn't really a logo when the characters are just picked from some font instead of tailored as part of the logo.
> Because they are still logos, not one list of short acronyms that just happens to be rendered in a specific way?
Consistency still matters. If you’re going through the trouble of making logos similar so they are understood as part of a family, don’t give up half way.
You want them to be even less distinctive? Personally, I think they should lean into that more and embrace the context: e.g. sans-serif for CSS, monospace for JS, serif for HTML.
The current logos are both uninteresting and badly constructed. At least either make them consistent (less distinctive but you can appreciate them as thought out as part of a family) or wildly different (more distinctive but not as clear they’re part of a family). This middle ground is the worst of all possible options.
I think we're stretching the definition of "logos" here. Just sticking text in a square doesn't make it a true logo.
Think of Apple or Nike, those are real logos. The recent logos and icons, including apps like Photoshop's, seem more like we're prioritizing metrics over creativity.
What about those of IBM, Facebook, Google, Netflix, or Uber? They're just words, with gentle stylization. Sometimes their logos take on the shape of a single letter in a box, which by your standards might even be less creative.
But there are reasons for this. Plain wordmarks are high-contrast and easy to read almost by default, and they work great with groups that aren't already aware of your brand. Or as Netflix puts it (https://brand.netflix.com/en/assets/logos/),
> The Wordmark remains an essential identifier of our brand. While our goal is to lead with the N Symbol, we enlist the Wordmark to ensure brand recognition in low-awareness markets or when production limits the use of color.
CSS doesn't have a ton of brand awareness. Making something akin to the Nike Swoosh for CSS won't catch on, it's not like they have the money to flood your Instagram feed with it and force that brand recognition on you.
Going back to Netflix why would they use a single gently stylized letter where possible? Well,
> In high-awareness markets, we lead with the N Symbol. There is power in owning a letter of the alphabet: it’s universal and instantly identifiable as shorthand for our brand.
That's right. Netflix wants to own the letter N. I think "CSS" is in the same position: owning a combination of three letters is a power move. That's the most valuable thing about the "CSS brand," if ever there were one, so why not lead with it?
But maybe your opinion is still that all of these designers are full of it (apparently including Paul Rand).
WTF does a markup standard need its own logo for Pete's sake anyway.
Imagine if we had a logo for every bloody RFC internet standard. Little colored round-cornered squares with HTTP/TLS/SMTP/IMAP/LDAP stamped in each of them.
The web community is obsessed with this "neat, tidy" shit while the all the standards involved (HTML, JS, CSS etc) are a dog's breakfast.
> The color was originally going to be called beccapurple, but Meyer asked that it instead be named rebeccapurple, as his daughter had wanted to be called Rebecca once she had turned six. She had said that Becca was a "baby name," and that once she had turned six, she wanted to be called Rebecca. As Eric Meyer put it, "She made it to six. For almost twelve hours, she was six. So Rebecca it is and must be."
Wasn't expecting tears over a colour
I'm sobbing like a baby while my 5yo twins are watching TV nearby. That is such a 5-going-on-6 decision to make, which just drives the whole thing home for me and I can't handle it right now.
I've always loved the existence of "rebeccapurple", but I somehow missed that part of the story. Her color being immortalized in the CSS logo (even if it changes years from now) is so incredibly beautiful to me.
The last two sentences of that quote hit me so hard.
..in 2014 in honor of Eric Meyer's daughter, Rebecca, who passed away at the age of six on her birthday from brain cancer.
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It is sad to see such a comment come from someone with such high karma and seniority. I hope that it is not reflective of the ethos of this community.
I feel we have way too little humanity in tech. With the advent of AI, that does not promise to improve.
Not to mention, we have a bunch of names that are just jokes, bad puns, random references, or idle wordplay.
C# is named because it’s a step up from C++, which is one better than C, which is the next thing after B.
Python is just an arbitrarily chosen name referencing a comedy troupe.
Linux is Linus’s copy of Minix, which is a minimal Unix, which is based off of Multics, which is a pseudo-initialism.
We have names honoring the dead; Pascal, Ada, Darwin.
We can name one color in one spec in honor of one person’s dead child.
It is neither a burden nor out of character for the field. If you genuinely believe it is a problem, I ask that you step back and reflect on why you truly believe it is.
Isn't "PHP" a play on words?
I'm told that it stands for "PHP Hypertext Processor." A recursive acronym.
Originally it was personal home page
It quite reminds me of Richard Stallman's reply on an email list asking people to refrain from posting about the birth of a baby on a technical mailing list.
http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...
This color is beautiful, the deleted comment was likely nasty, and Stallman was right.
Nuance;
I'm not sure it's fair for me to comment on "the ethos of this community," but I remember when rebeccapurple was added to the spec and there were commenters here bemoaning adding complexity to the spec for no benefit.
I'll say "You will find more than zero people here who don't really seem to consider humanity and tech overlapping domains."
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I’m sorry that it seems this comment was dinged. It was (in my opinion) a reasonable one, and not delivered in an attack fashion.
I can only speak for myself, but I inject a great deal of “humanity” into my technical work.
I write software that Serves a pretty marginalized and sidelined demographic. Not many folks are willing to do the type of work that I do.
I certainly don’t do it for the kudos. I don’t think most of the folks here, would care, and some, might actually hate me for doing the work.
I do it, because I actually have a personal stake in the work, and because I care -deeply- about the people that use my software. Whenever I design an app, I keep in mind the folks that use it, and ensure that it delivers something that they need (not what I think they need; what they actually need). My work is informed by a mental model that I have, imagining the software being used by people, not by it projecting my brand, making money (it’s free), or salving personal insecurities.
I’m quite aware that this is not the norm, in the industry, but I have worked for companies that kept a laser focus on the end-user experience, which involves a great deal of “getting into their heads.”
Everytime I see the content dissappear from being flagged and moderated away, I feel poorer and wonder what it was that I can no longer be allowed to read. How aggressively should messages be moderated on HN? After I had myself been unreasonably sensored in other discussions, this very active moderation is giving me serious concerns about HN. Robot spam should be moderated, or illegal things, but do we really need edgy comments hidden from view? I've seen a lot of magnanimous, wise and empathic responses on some otherwise cutting comments, a lot of goodwill here on HN. Do we really need the heavy hand of censors to protect us from offensive speech???
If you want to see comments from trolls, bigots, and shadowbanned users turn the showdead option on. I have it turned on and maybe 1% of comments are worth vouching for.
If you want to see it, turn on I See Dead Posts.
I keep mine off, because, for the most part, I don't mind not seeing the trolls.
In this case, the chap made a point that many people (including myself) disagree with, but in a fashion that I think is right in line with the way we should deal with each other.
I just think people downvote posts they disagree with, or because they have some animus with the poster (I have a couple of downvote stalkers, myself, and it's sometimes amusing to see which posts they hit).
Thank you, I was blissfully unaware of show dead after all these years of being here.
It’s not censors. It’s fellow users collectively voting on what we want in our community and what we don’t. (Didn’t downvote or flag it as it was dead when I got here)
I did not consider your comment to be an attack in any way.
My issue boils down to some completely wanting to change IT terminology because of "emotions" which happens because people do not consider the context in which it is embedded.
I meant your comment. It seemed to be unpopular.
> Recently, we renamed the "master" branch to "main," which was seen by some as a step toward inclusivity. But does this truly contribute to meaningful progress?
In that case, probably not since the world master has multiple meanings. However, as you noted, it is common to use master/slave terminology in the hardware world. That terminology is definitely problematic because we are humans. We are affected by human history and we are affected by social constructs. Something similar can be said about killing processes. It is also worth noting that people noticed that terminology was problematic long before the current social environment, probably because it affects a much broader range of the population. (For example: I don't see that terminology used much outside of Unix.)
The terminology itself is not inherently problematic; it is essential for us, as humans (as you noted), to be capable of compartmentalizing and recognizing the context in which terms are used. Language often carries multiple meanings, and our ability to discern the appropriate meaning within a specific context is a critical cognitive skill.
Neutralizing a term or altering it solely for the sake of political correctness (or whatever you may call it) is not the most effective approach when dealing with terminology that has long-standing and widespread usage. Such changes can create unnecessary confusion, disrupt established workflows, and detract from efforts to address more impactful systemic issues. Instead, fostering education and promoting contextual understanding can better equip individuals to interpret terms appropriately without discarding their historical or technical significance.
> Something similar can be said about killing processes. It is also worth noting that people noticed that terminology was problematic long before the current social environment, probably because it affects a much broader range of the population.
People should ideally not be affected by such terminology, as it is clearly used within a technical context with no intention of causing harm or evoking negative connotations[1]. The phrase "killing processes" for example, is a metaphorical term that accurately describes terminating a running operation in computing. Allowing neutral, domain-specific terminology to become a source of offense risks overextending sensitivity and detracts from the importance of addressing genuinely harmful language or actions in broader societal contexts. As I have previously mentioned, fostering an understanding of the technical intent behind such terms can help mitigate unnecessary emotional responses.
Altering long-standing and widespread technical terminology for perceived correctness is often futile, as individuals who lack contextual understanding or are overly sensitive could potentially take offense at ANY TERM. If anything, we should focus on education and promoting linguistic contextualization that ensures terms are understood within their intended meaning, preserving clarity, historical significance, and functionality.
[1] master/slave terminology has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, for example.
I agree with not switching from "master" to "main" in git branch parliance. (The music industry didn't stop "mastering" albums, with good reason -- it's a technical term that refers to technical authority, which is a concept worth keeping.)
But I don't think this thread is the place for such a discussion. Technical authority and "woke" culture arguments are one thing, but we're talking here about honoring Erie Meier (a seminal figure in CSS history) and his daughter by adding a named color (basically an alias) to CSS and using it in the logo. That's worth doing simply out of love and honor for Eric, his wife and family, and his daughter.
Just to clarify: my comment was not related to Erie Meier at all.
I do not mind the rename from beccapurple to rebeccapurple either.
It was not his proposal and it was not in his power to approve it. Community proposed and endorsed it.
He only requested a change from becca to rebecca.
It's the sort of emotions over logic we need more, you mean.
Not even this. There's no "logical" argument against it. The CSS color names are largely arbitrary and always have been (e.g. "indigo" is a shade of purple, when IRL indigo is the plant that produces the dye for blue jeans). Color names in general have been arbitrary since long before Newton coined ROYGBIV and decided to use "blue" to mean what we call "cyan" today.
It's an attitude that presumes that we can apply logic to all walks of life, which ironically is an inherently illogical stance.
Yeah, that's the main oversight of the OP that makes them look silly.
There was no logic to the naming scheme. It was all arbitrary, and the names came in waves from various sources like house paint colors, Crayolas, and the whims of people behind various implementations.
If they replaced '#663399' with 'rebeccapurple' maybe they'd have a point.
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I mostly agree, but not for code lexical choices. The comment obviously lacks empathy and would be better unsung another tone and not words like graveyard.
Names are easier to learn and remember when universal. We know memorization works with associations and Chocolate, PaleTurquoise and Aqua are great for that. Chartreuse and DodgerBlue aren’t. While I can personnaly relate to the first the second is totally alien. Both lacks a bit more universality IMHO.
Absolute universality isn’t achievable but I stand that is a usefull direction to head to.
I’m deeply sorry for Eric’s daughter and gratefull for his work. I’m sure there’s other ways to honor them.
PS: thanks for the HN post, now I can relate to RebeccaPurple!
I’m not sure. I think it is what makes human. The details are that what make life worth living instead just the endless turning of the cogs. Besides, if you don’t like it, just use the rgb value.
I think finding a meaningful way recognise a significant contributor in a way that doesn’t really impact anyone is something to be encouraged. I imagine that most people would use the hex code anyway and only devs/designers would see the name in their tooling.
I can’t see how to apply logic to naming a colour. It’s fundamentally a perceptual and, dare I say it, emotional process.
I also think your comment is uncharitable and tone deaf.
Software is a part of human culture. All of human culture is intertwined.
You actually thought of that and then also wrote it down. You had to intentionally press "reply" to make the internet see this message.
I am stunned!
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You look at the monstrosity that is the CSS spec(s), filled to the brim with horrible ideas like floats, the various overcomplicated positioning modes that no mortal can hope to ever fully understand, and undefined behavior left and right in general. And the "bloat" you end up singling out is... an addition to the otherwise 147 entries long color name table.[0]
That's just bizarre.
[0]: at least when I was implementing it: https://git.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/tree/351f2f51322c2fa291772c... perhaps there's more now...
Your list includes all 140 CSS named colors, so as per CSS Color Module Level 3, it is exhaustive. Your list has duplicates which are valid because both American and British spellings are recognized, e.g. "darkgray" and "darkgrey".
If it is not limited to CSS, then you are missing X11 colors (around ~256), for example, although some overlap with CSS colors.
If interested, Gpick can serve as a starting point.
What’s ur browser called?
Yeah wow, I love that this is forever encoded into the standard now. A lovely tribute. It's always been one of the few CSS default colors I actually like too (alongside "cornflowerblue").
Good taste, I also think cornflowerblue is a very balanced color
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Eric Meyer's posts about his daughter's illness, and the family's lifelong process of grieving afterward, are heartbreaking. It's arresting, gripping writing. It's wonderful and awful. Hug your loved ones tight. https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...
Thank you for linking this. I read bits and pieces of this as it was happening but it never fully registered for me at 24. I'm sitting here 10 years later at 34 having lost our son at 23 weeks. His due date was this past week. It's affected me in ways that still surprise, befuddle, and sometimes scare me. I cannot even begin to fathom what he's been through; the most recent blog post has me in tears.
I have really strong memories of learning HTML, CSS, and javascript in high school, and spending time in the school library picking apart css/edge. It felt like the dawn of a new era, I was in awe of the things I saw there. I built more than a few sites trying to get my head around the complexispiral demo, and spent countless hours diving into resources I found there (like A List Apart! I will never forget the suckerfish drop-downs). This is one of the few moments I have such vivid memories of that were directly responsible me for pursuing computer engineering and ultimately going so far into UI/UX and the web. I've never written it out this explicitly but: thank you for everything, Eric.
Thank you for sharing, Eric. It’s been a few years now for me since we lost our son before I ever had the chance to meet him and I’m not sure it’s any easier. Stories like yours and that of others help us all know we’re not alone in our grief though so I encourage you to keep sharing and telling your story.
Hearing other people's stories helps so much, even though it can be a reminder of the long road ahead dealing with grief. I'm so sorry for your loss.
We lost our daughter a few months ago, 30 days before her due date. We decided to terminate due to a rare genetic condition.
The pain feels too strong to handle some days. I find myself in tears after some seemingly random trigger: seeing another baby in a stroller, listening to a beautiful track named "Never Known", our first daughter saying she wants to play with her friend's small sister, seeing a painting she made with her to-be sister, writing this comment etc.
I have accepted that the pain will always be there.
Thanks for sharing your story.
P.S. there are subreddits where people share similar stories
I really appreciate you sharing your story. Getting to the point of accepting the pain of the loss is a huge milestone, even when so many days feel like one step forward, two steps back. I’m deeply sorry for your loss.
A few days ago I completely broke down hearing “Daughter” by Four Tet. The triggers that don’t even make sense are the hardest. It’s really tough to hear other people having felt similar pain (nobody should have to endure it), but it’s comforting to not feel completely alone in it. Wishing the best for you and your family.
I hope every day is a bit easier than the last for you.
Thanks for telling your story, too. Grateful.
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Ouch. As a father, that was a gutpunch. Dark, haunting, dripping with grief and pain, but beautifully written and very haunting.
I can’t imagine anything worse than what that guy has been through.
I’m holding my sleeping baby as I write this and I just hugged him even tighter. Thanks for sharing.
As a father of two girls, I’m not clicking that link. I don’t think I could handle it.
I don’t blame you. I haven’t cried like that in a long time.
Username checks out.
Having never had children myself, his writing moved me in a way that I struggle to comprehend. I spent my 2 hour commute reading through all of his writing on his time, and subsequent grief of his daughter, starting here: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/06/18/welcome-2/
I found this piece particularly moving, and brought me to tears:
https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/10/so-many-nevers...
Those posts are definitely not for everyone. It is a deep dive into the emotions of a grieving father for over a decade.
I really hope that man can find peace.
How can the game be so unfair for some? People don’t deserve this.
Makes you think how life so easily and randomly can be so different irrespective of who you are or what you do to affect you forever.
Was just reading this on the pain of parenting in Medea by Euripides this weekend:
"Suppose that the children have grown into youth And have turned out good, still, if God so wills it, Death will away with your children's bodies, And carry them off into Hades. What is our profit, then, that for the sake of Children the gods should pile up on mortals After all else This most terrible grief of all?"
I try not to think about it too much.
This might be a topic too heavy for this venue. The thumbnail sketch is "Consult the history of human philosophy and faith and you will find people wrestling with this question ever since we could talk and write."
(Personal opinion: fairness is a human construct. The universe does not care. We are the ones who make it as fair as we can.)
Neil, there is a logic flaw in your little aphorism that seems quite telling. Since you and I are a part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, Neil, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it. Nice day, indeed
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald - Apr 10, 2019
That's the consequence of procreation
it's indeed strange to realize that life / universe can crunch everything brainlessly in some spot while everything else is colorful around
"wonderful and awful" is such a brilliant way to capture this. Thank you
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Who are you to tell someone else how to process his grief?
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There's a time to use critical analysis, and there's a time to keep quiet and show some respect.
There is no evidence this person is self destructing. You've read that in. This isn't coming from Meyer. It's coming from you.
You regularly jump into threads to criticize how other people deal with their mental health challenges.
I would appreciate if you would stop. It's inappropriate. You've been asked to stop by users and by dang multiple times.
Maybe when you feel challenged by the way other people approach mental health, you should treat it as an invitation to practice rather than an invitation to criticize.
> You regularly jump into threads to criticize how other people deal with their mental health challenges.
> I would appreciate if you would stop. It's inappropriate. You've been asked to stop by users and by dang multiple times.
You must be thinking of someone else
I'm recalling you, specifically. Because I've seen this happen multiple times, you've left an impression.
I hope you have a good day and that you weigh your words with care.
Why are you making a new throwaway for each post?
> I'm recalling you, specifically. Because I've seen this happen multiple times, you've left an impression.
But I've never done it before
Is he self-destructing? That's a short blog post 10 years after it happened. The latest before that in Rebecca category is 3 years before that. And then he just seems to do those blog posts during birthdays.
He's doing therapy etc, what else can he be doing? Writing blog posts is also processing.
I will never ever forget this color name and the story behind it for the rest of my life.
I had read about it in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186932 (or some other earlier HN submission) and had since forgotten it. I wouldn’t be surprised to forget about it again.
Not a chance. It's not just about the color rebeccapurple but the emotional relation and deep connection between the CSS new logo, the story behind that particular color and how the CSS community merged them into one.
And furthermore, I am a passionate logo designer and logo design critique.
It would be nicer if you could forget to be inconsiderate next time.
I only meant to point out that things might not go as expected, despite how emotionally impactful it might seem in the moment.
Yes. Similarly, I’m pointing out that despite your expectations, your comment comes off as you being a jerk.
Of course people forget things, but as the other commenter mentioned, I think you are bringing unnecessary logic to what is an emotional subject and response. Which as they say, makes you come across as a jerk while bringing no value to the conversation.
But did you really forget it if you remember that you read this already?
Did you really forgot why its called rebeccapurple?
It’ll be interesting to see where we end up using this. I don’t honestly see the CSS3 shield this is meant to replace very often anymore.
Probably the place where it’ll be seen the most is in IDE file trees, where I’m a bit worried it’ll just look like a little purple blob
File Browser / Finder maybe, but the text inside the boxes are too small for IDE file trees.
VS Code shows "JS" in yellow text without the box, against a dark background. CSS is just a blue hash symbol. Maybe they'll change the color to rebeccapurple, but I don't think there's room for a box around the symbol.
> Update 22 Jun 14: the proposal was approved by the CSS WG and added to the CSS4 Colors module. Patches to web browsers have already happened in nightly builds. (I’m just now catching up on this after the unexpected death of Kat’s father early Saturday morning.)
Mr. Meyer certainly had a rough 2014.
Kudos to him and all his CSS contributions over the years. I hope he has been able to find some solace since then.
I would say he hasn't, considering a few months ago he wrote "A Decade Later, A Decade Lost" https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2024/06/07/a-decade-later...
And I can't blame him. They say no parent should see their child die, and that's certainly true; but especially no parent should see their 6 year old child die of brain cancer. Humans are not built to withstand that.
> Humans are not built to withstand that.
What's that supposed to mean? Humans grew up being slaughtered by wild animals. Safe housing is an extremely recent invention and many humans still don't have it.
In case it needs stating, watching your child die in increasingly agonising pain over a year while your glimmer of hope for their survival dimishes every single day, with moments of false dawn, is a very different experience to watching your child being killed by a wild animal.
As for your imaginary hunter gatherer:
1) Yes I'm sure when a child died in agony over a prolonged period of time in hunter gatherer societies, their family was also traumatised.
2) The modern nuclear family has changed our sense of emotional attachment to our children. Whether that's good or bad is a separate discussion, but our relationship with our children is different to what it was 500 years ago, let alone 5,000 years ago.
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Like Rebecca, I also like #639 - its a wonderful color. Looks great on a web-site as a solid color that you can built a palette from and the hex code is simplicity to remember. I really wish CSS had more color names - would have been great to have named, Pantone colors or another named system.
HTML/CSS has a lot of color names: https://htmlcolorcodes.com/color-names/
Pantone colors as CSS variables: https://github.com/Margaret2/pantone-colors/blob/master/pant...
Eric’s CSS: The Definitive Guide really is the only way to learn CSS. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/css-the-definitive/9781...
It's great that Rebecca's name will be find its ways across codebases for as long as we are using named aliases for colors in HTML/CSS.
It's nowhere near the significance of her's and Eric's story, but the piece of land where my grandfather built his home in the 1940s or 1950s has his name on it: the "Paul D. Cravens Addition". Even though that home is long since gone (in a fire) and the land is owned by someone else, every deed and building permit henceforth has his name attached it.
I used rebeccapurple a lot as well, unknowing of the touching story behind it. I coded CSS by hand (back in like 2010), and for placeholders, I used the simple colors I knew, like "green" or "blue". And "red", of course, too. But when typing "re" for "red", I noticed that it autocompletes to "rebeccapurple", which amused me, since I thought it's kind of a nonsense to have a color named like that. Over time, I used it a lot, and it became a kind of a favorite of mine.
For the record, rebeccapurple was ratified in June 2014 [0] and was added to mainstream browsers late that year [1]. I imagine it wouldn't be "web-safe" until 2015/2016 at the earliest.
(Not doubting your anecdote - Just felt like doing some sleuthing on the timeline)
[0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014Jun/0312.... [1] https://caniuse.com/css-rebeccapurple (use "Date Relative")
That's actually later than I remember doing all that frontend work. It wasn't for production though, that's for sure, so I used it as soon as it appeared instead of my usual "red". Thanks for the clarifications.
Is there any link that explains why this particular shade of purple was chosen to represent Rebecca?
Purple was her favorite color. #639 is shorthand for about the purplest purple you can make with RGB. Jeff Zeldman proposed the color name on Twitter and in a blog post shortly after she died, and it understandably caught on.
For some reason, I was under the impression that the blue shield was the css logo.
But after looking at it, I realized that it was just for CSS 3 and I'm not sure if it was even official?
Related. Others?
Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186932 - Dec 2022 (1 comment)
Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9565503 - May 2015 (33 comments)
Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 - June 2014 (25 comments)
In memory of Rebecca Alison Meyer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7863890 - June 2014 (68 comments)
An official logo for CSS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124786 - November 2024
I imagine your submission, which you link here, wasn't included as it has no comments. I think dang posts these so people can read the comments made on other submissions.
Why does it include TS? I would never have called it a 'web technology'. A lot of people use it in their tech stack, but fortunately, the browser does not even understand it, right?
>The design follows the design language of the logos of other web technologies like JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly.
and yet it's 5 logos with 3 different font sizes and at least 3 different font faces
3 of which are perfect rectangles, and 2 of which are slight variations on rectangles
i guess it perfectly represents the ecosystem, no notes
To fully represent HTML, they should be displayed with sightly different fonts and kerning in each operating system.
and on iOS they should still use the old logo for one additional year
This is the evolution of "Design by committee" to "Design by 3 committees"
It's a nice purple.
A simple one too - it would be on a 216 colour pallete using six values for each of R, G and B.
R = 1/5
G = 2/5
B = 3/5
Edit: of course that makes sense it is probably a "web safe" one
It's R = 2/5, G = 1/5.
Oh yeah --facepalm-- it's purple after all!
If it's such a simple combination, I wonder why it wasn't officially named until 2014. CSS has had names for all sorts of weird colors since forever.
Most CSS color names were inherited from the X11 color list [1], which, in turn, sourced its colors from a weird mixture of Crayola crayons, paint samples, and idiosyncratic personal choices [2]. It's a mess.
[1]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/blob/master/di...
[2]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014Mar/0272....
Maybe it wasn’t named so that long after people like me pass from memory for good, people will still speak of Rebecca and of the love we showed her.
For your name to recited by the machines for all eternity is a form of immortality.
GNU Terry Pratchett
Like Linus Torvalds' Linux or Phil Katz' PKZIP.
Huh?
I don’t click on HN articles expecting to cry, but here we are.
https://github.com/vic/rebecca-theme I thought it derrives from this.
Haha
(Touching story. Now I feel bad about making the joke (?), but I will anyway.)
Was I the only one going in thinking that this would result in a slightly off-green colour (RGB(14, 202, 0)) instead?
(Ref. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8318911)
This would have been quite funny instead:
https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1851735303.3881/flat,750x,07...
GNU Rebecca Meyer
<3
I didn't expect a logo update to bring tears to my eyes.
I am in a train and I stopped reading because I was crying too much. The fact that the reminder of this story hides in plain sight, in the form of a named CSS color, makes it even more touching for some reason.
I really don’t like these logos that are boxes with text in the lower right. The post cites a “common design language” with other tech but this has to be the most low effort language imaginable.
I once saw an interview with an apparently well-known logo designer, who said something to the effect of: "When somebody sees my work and says 'that's nothing, anybody could make that', that means they instantly got the logo, understood its structure, with no distraction. That's what it's meant to do, so to me it's a compliment."
Whether that applies here is naturally subjective, but hearing that changed how I look at logo designs a bit.
I dunno, a lot of professional design these days of extreme flatness looks like stuff I’d have done in the ‘00s while developing something just to have some kind of design and structure, then everyone would see it and be like “the program’s great but of course we’ll need to get the designers on it, ha ha, programmers and design, so bad at it, am I right?”
A lot of it would still get that reaction, I think, if a programmer presented them instead of a designer, and these look to me like they’d be among them.
Eh, having worked halfway between coding and design my whole career, I'm ambivalent. Design is just one of those things that everyone is confident they have an informed opinion about, even if they've spent a lifetime total of zero seconds thinking about what the criteria for a good design should be, let alone how to apply them. I think most every designer learns early on to ignore all the "but that's just..." comments, and rightly so IMHO.
That said:
> A lot of it would still get that reaction, I think, if a programmer presented them instead of a designer, and these look to me like they’d be among them.
Weren't the logos in TFA made and voted on by programmers?
There’s a limit to that. By that token, every logo in existence could be a white square with black text on it. Clearly they are not, because people understand the need for some differentiation. Even in this case, the logos benefit from having colour.
And they’re not even consistent. Three of them are squares, two of them are different shapes, and despite the simplicity even something as trivial as the font size and spacing isn’t uniform.
> By that token, every logo in existence could be a white square with black text on it.
As I think you already know, the designer obviously wasn't suggesting that. He was saying that clarity matters, not that only clarity matters.
I could listen to logo designers talk all day long, you pick up some many nuggets of wisdom. I've watched pretty much everything Aaron Draplin has online that you can access for free.
> that means they instantly got the logo, understood its structure, with no distraction.
We didn't get that it was supposed to be a logo or a brand though.
Labels like this look like placeholders. They leave you feeling empty and convey a sense of amateurishness.
These do provoke a visceral response. It's not an "Oh!", nor even an "oh?", but rather an "oh..."
The "brand guidelines" will be broadly disrespected since the mental threshold for brand awareness is higher than the entropy of a square.
Logos do not exist in a vacuum, so evaluating them requires considering their context.
CSS is not a technology that needs eye-catching marketing. The existence of branding is mostly just for the purposes of giving someone something to put on a powerpoint slide, or a sticker to put on a laptop. It's allowed to be boring.
In addition, it exists as part of a family of web technologies, so giving it consistent branding with the other web technologies makes sense. You can argue that whoever first came up with this simple sort of branding was unimaginative (I think the JS logo was the first?), but just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not capable of being iconic.
They could've added some character by letting the text overflow the box :)
That's been the unofficial "logo for CSS" for years: https://i0.wp.com/css-tricks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/...
It appears this option was discussed: https://github.com/CSS-Next/css-next/issues/105#issuecomment...
The overlapping CSS suggestions had the most thumbs up, but did not seem to make it into the candidates.
They use the words vote and community, but actually taking them seriously means accepting the Boaty McBooatface when it happens.
I liked the offset logos because they served just as well as logos and were a good humoured nod towards CSS issues that it would be worthwhile keeping in mind for a bit of humility.
The rounded corners was a suitable reference to css, I think.
I think Adobe started this trend. A box with "Ps" inside for Photoshop, "Lr" for Lightroom, etc. for all their products.
An entire generation of web designers grew up with their heads stuck in the Adobe ecosystem, so this must look like the gold standard to them.
At least Adobe made an effort to make their logos look like symbols on the periodic table.
To me these made sense, as I was able to quickly, visually distinguish PhotoShop by the “PS” letters instead of trying to decipher a 32x32 logo.
You prefer these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#/media/File:HTML5_logo_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CSS3_logo_and_wordmark.sv...
Not who you are replying to, but I started learning HTML/CSS right when HTML5 and CSS3 had just come out, so I do have somewhat of a soft spot for these
Yes, I've always thought they were excellent logos. Makes me nostalgic about the optimism of this time.
Also people actually use them, a while back every CS student inexplicably had these stickers on their laptop. I can't see these new logos being ever used as stickers because they're just... nothing.
As someone coming back to frontend after ten years... the optimism was justified! Writing UI code is amazing now.
Don't let the warts of the real implementation get you down, it's a delight how everything I want to do is just part of the vanilla stack now, one way or another.
Have you used MUI? Massive game-changer for me (as someone who knows CSS well).
Absolutely prefer these
They are nicer logos esthetically speaking, but of course it's ridiculous that the emphasis is on the version rather than the actual technology.
I'm not even convinced that html and css need logos. Those shield logos always made me think they were trying to sell you something, which is weird for a markup language.
Yes.
They're so much nicer.
They remind me way too much of dark-arts virus checker, disk cleaner BS.
Yes.
Is this the only choice we have?
How about this? https://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-css-v.svg ;)
puke.gif
100% yeah
They are certainly more colorblind and vision impairment friendly to be honest.
What is color blind unfriendly about the new logos precisely? Which variant of color blindness will not be able to read them?
Which visual impairment exactly will find it easier to parse the previous logos (which are a mess of design scarcely related to the actual technology name) than the current ones, which contain thick bold text indicating exactly what the technology is called?
Here's a good starting point: https://www.sfgov.org/designing-visually-impaired
> Do not rely on color alone to denote information
> Use additional cues or information to convey content
The old icons were certainly ugly. But they had a unique shape (cue) and didn't rely on color. The new logo has text which helps, but this is where visual impairment becomes an issue (lack of focus to read said text).
I have no intent to take away from the meaningful choices made in this logo's design. But even just picking a unique shape for each component would go a long way.
The old CSS and HTML logos had identical shape aside from the text. The new CSS and HTML logos have different shape (albeit subtle), larger text, and a greater difference in lightness.
Comparison, in monochrome at small size: https://i.imgur.com/3UvKKtg.png
While they aren't snazzy, they do have some benefits that often go unconsidered:
Logos are sometimes printed on shirts (in monochrome, or where rich coloring costs extra), or embroidered onto hats, or read at a distance (like conference booth posters), or printed to B/W official letterhead, or scaled down for an icon pack. A 3rd party will include a logo on something with a preexisting style, and it should look okay there.
A logo which is structurally simple and uses few colors can be easily adapted to these scenarios — printed in black-and-white, or as an outline without solid colors.
They should have centered the text in it both vertically and horizontally
It's impossible to do that with CSS :)
Could've used this classic CSS joke as the logo https://i.etsystatic.com/21468781/r/il/426363/2712010149/il_...
There was a submission like that :) https://github.com/CSS-Next/css-next/issues/105#issuecomment...
I don't see the problem with low-effort. It's clear and concise, while also having more character when just an un-styled word mark. This is a technology used by people who already know what it is, I would be far more annoyed with adding more complexity.
Sure, but it's good that it's low effort. We don't need fancy branding for languages. Few people will see thrm. These aren't paid products with marketing campaigns. They are just tools of the trade.
Simplicity is fine! Minimal effort is fine! But these are poorly executed. The article says the logo follows "the design language of the logos of other web technologies," but there is no design language.
The text in in random sizes and different fonts for no reason. The shapes are not all the same or all different; they are just randomly different.
It's not that any one logo looks bad; they look awful because they are _incoherent_.
Disagree, but then again my soulless engineer's heart has close to zero tolerance for design for design's sake, so what do I know?
The most important part about convoying that an item is CSS is including the letters CSS. So while I am a little disgusted they wasted time on an icon at all, I will admit that many of our design language structures demand an icon. So I am somewhat relieved they managed to dodge the design for design's sake crowd and picked the best possible one. A non-descript box with the letters CSS in it.
"Non-descript" is unfair - it has 3 rounded corners!
I preferred the old HTML/CSS/JS logos: https://banner2.cleanpng.com/20180920/kl/kisspng-javascript-...
My only critique is that I wish they had left-justified the CSS logo with all the other logos right-justified. As a joke. ;)
the design language is really "keep it inside the box, don't worry about your self-imposed solution constraints"
You're absolutely right, especially considering the canonical CSS-in-a-box logo has long been established [1], and they should really embrace it if they had any sense of humor.
Perhaps those brutalist logos were designed specifically such that they could be rendered using CSS itself? Though I could understand why they'd want to distance themselves from the old "shield" logo that turned out to signify shielding "browser vendors" from broad implementation of CSS renderers and to keep a niche of job security at W3C, Inc. due to rampant and unwarranted complexity, but in any case was burnt by being placed next to vulgar metalhand vectors, not to speak of being culturally discriminative when viewed in a "woke" interpretation.
[1]: https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.13378023.4114/raf,750x1000,0...
> especially considering the canonical CSS-in-a-box logo has long been established
Is this a joke? I’ve never seen it in my life, not even sure where you’re pulling it from
I’ve been using it for years. A lot of years.
Yeah these are programmer art.
Or clones of Adobe’s lame branding.
Without even judging the overall design (personally I don't mind the simplicity), why on earth do they use such inconsistent fonts? 3 different font sizes (and maybe also mismatching horizontal spacings) for 5 assorted logos??? This is insane...
Because they are still logos, not one list of short acronyms that just happens to be rendered in a specific way?
I really think it's fine: the web assembly gets to play with its parallels between W and A, JS gets to mirror the J's bottom-bend in its S (TS tagging along because those two really are more than just accidental neighbors), whereas CSS can indulge in summetry with its twin S by making them internally symmetric themselves. A logo that contains an acronym isn't really a logo when the characters are just picked from some font instead of tailored as part of the logo.
> Because they are still logos, not one list of short acronyms that just happens to be rendered in a specific way?
Consistency still matters. If you’re going through the trouble of making logos similar so they are understood as part of a family, don’t give up half way.
You want them to be even less distinctive? Personally, I think they should lean into that more and embrace the context: e.g. sans-serif for CSS, monospace for JS, serif for HTML.
The current logos are both uninteresting and badly constructed. At least either make them consistent (less distinctive but you can appreciate them as thought out as part of a family) or wildly different (more distinctive but not as clear they’re part of a family). This middle ground is the worst of all possible options.
Old logos were more consistent yest still distinctive IMO: https://banner2.cleanpng.com/20180920/kl/kisspng-javascript-...
It's incredibly ironic
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Wheres the parade? I must have missed it.
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The bar for a logo has become so low. I don't understand how we reached here and everyone are happy about it.
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I think we're stretching the definition of "logos" here. Just sticking text in a square doesn't make it a true logo.
Think of Apple or Nike, those are real logos. The recent logos and icons, including apps like Photoshop's, seem more like we're prioritizing metrics over creativity.
What about those of IBM, Facebook, Google, Netflix, or Uber? They're just words, with gentle stylization. Sometimes their logos take on the shape of a single letter in a box, which by your standards might even be less creative.
But there are reasons for this. Plain wordmarks are high-contrast and easy to read almost by default, and they work great with groups that aren't already aware of your brand. Or as Netflix puts it (https://brand.netflix.com/en/assets/logos/),
> The Wordmark remains an essential identifier of our brand. While our goal is to lead with the N Symbol, we enlist the Wordmark to ensure brand recognition in low-awareness markets or when production limits the use of color.
CSS doesn't have a ton of brand awareness. Making something akin to the Nike Swoosh for CSS won't catch on, it's not like they have the money to flood your Instagram feed with it and force that brand recognition on you.
Going back to Netflix why would they use a single gently stylized letter where possible? Well,
> In high-awareness markets, we lead with the N Symbol. There is power in owning a letter of the alphabet: it’s universal and instantly identifiable as shorthand for our brand.
That's right. Netflix wants to own the letter N. I think "CSS" is in the same position: owning a combination of three letters is a power move. That's the most valuable thing about the "CSS brand," if ever there were one, so why not lead with it?
But maybe your opinion is still that all of these designers are full of it (apparently including Paul Rand).
This is definitely a logo, by all definitions of the word. It’s not just "text in a box", it’s:
- text, with a specific font, position, size, weight
- a specific color
- a box radius in 3 corners
- some variants
By your definition, the Coca Cola logo is not a logo because it’s "just text"
Tell Gap (and all the rest).
WTF does a markup standard need its own logo for Pete's sake anyway. Imagine if we had a logo for every bloody RFC internet standard. Little colored round-cornered squares with HTTP/TLS/SMTP/IMAP/LDAP stamped in each of them.
The web community is obsessed with this "neat, tidy" shit while the all the standards involved (HTML, JS, CSS etc) are a dog's breakfast.
Actually, that'd be kind of nice.
At least for how my brain works, having a little picture to hang the information off of is easier than having to memorize a slew of TLAs and FLAs.
Maybe I should rough out some logos for these things for myself.
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