Daniel is colorblind and contacted me to help him build an app that would let colorblind users identify the base hue for any RGB color. While my app gives fancy names like "Amethyst Smoke" and "Cobalt" it isn't helpful to users with colorblindness. Daniel's app says the base hue is "Violet" and "Blue." What I learnt about colorblindness is that it's not always absolute. You can have Tritanomaly (blue-weakness) where everything looks just a bit off, not completely red/green. See here: http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
A comprehensive app of this kind would be really interesting. Like if it supported X color names, Windows color names, web color names (from very generic 16 "web-safe" color names to more specific like color names supported by Firefox 3.0), and translation features:
"What's the equivalent of a red-hued version of color named X of palette A in palette B?"
Would be great to only have to learn one color name set in detail and then have access to pretty much every color name in every system (of course it would support approximation too).
I don't know about all or even most of these colors but a few names to color combos I know from elsewhere. For instance 'cornflower blue' the default, was a color I was playing with the other day.
It is the default rendering clear color for the XNA Framework. Everyday, many budding game developers take their first steps into programming with this soothing blank screen: http://images.google.com/images?q=cornflower+blue+xna
A few customers thought we might have been referencing Fight Club, but I don't think it was conscious. I think whoever coded the base game template just liked that color :-)
It's also the eye color of the main character of possibly the greatest historical fiction series of all time, The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett.
Daniel is colorblind and contacted me to help him build an app that would let colorblind users identify the base hue for any RGB color. While my app gives fancy names like "Amethyst Smoke" and "Cobalt" it isn't helpful to users with colorblindness. Daniel's app says the base hue is "Violet" and "Blue." What I learnt about colorblindness is that it's not always absolute. You can have Tritanomaly (blue-weakness) where everything looks just a bit off, not completely red/green. See here: http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/