Color is a PSYC variable type.

Colors are currently encoded as the obvious hexidecimal #rrggbb inherited from early X11, then introduced into HTML.

I'd prefer a plan where the user gets to choose the HUE and SATURATION of his favorite color while the BRIGHTNESS (they call it VALUE?) is chosen by the designer of the chat interface.

This strategy allows each nickname to be encoloured in the color a person likes to relate with, still fit into the color scheme of the user interface.

This is most necessary in a black vs white background situation. We generally use black backgrounds because colors look cooler on black. Colors on white always looks like a children birthday. Okay I guess that's subjective..  ;)

So in case you want to have that birthday party on your screen, at least you get to fix the brightness values.

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White backgrounds consume more energy

White backgrounds on screens are generally not very ecological. A study of the US Department of Energy recommends to use dark backgrounds over light backgrounds as your screen power consumption can fall by 15 watts.

How to switch to dark backgrounds:

  • The original lynXified skin of this site is available in the preferences.  ;)
  • You can configure your browser to use dark colors, even if the website tries to be light.
  • You can make your operating system use dark colors on all occasions.

You will however occasionally encounter poorly written software which just presumes some background to be white. Complain to the authors.