colorspace
is the title of a collection of program-generated graphics for Web
browser-- that is, a set of
browser art images.
colorspace
is the title of a collection of program-generated graphics for Web
browser-- that is, a set of
browser art images.
In this context, the notion of a colorspace interprets the RGB system of colors as a three-dimensional geometric space in which successive planar views of the space can be rendered by fixing the value of one axis and varying incrementally the values of the other two axes over their entire ranges. In this way, the entire 3D colorspace can be visualized as a set of 768 images or planar slices-- 256 images along each axis.
The underlying program generating an image is a Server-Side Include (SSI) script written in version 5 of the programming language Perl. A particular image of a colorspace is laid out as the background colors of an array of empty cells comprising an HTML TABLE of 18 rows by 24 columns. It should be noted that this representational array of a colorspace slice is only approximate because an accurate representation would require an array of 256 by 256 cells.
Positioning the mouse over any cell in any particular colorspace image will display the RGB color value of the cell in the status bar of the browser if the browser is JavaScript-enabled.
Specifying the web page address of "colorspace.shtml" will generate a colorspace image based on the current time of day. (A 24-hour day is broken up into 768 periods of about two minutes each per colorspace slice.) Alternatively, a specific numbered colorspace image can be generated by appending the number of the colorspace as path information to the page reference, for example, specifying the address "colorspace.shtml/383" will generate the 383rd colorspace image.
In some cases, where the specific number (0-767) identifying a colorspace matches the corresponding RGB component value of a particular color which has been given an English name, the title of the generated colorspace will include the corresponding English name of the color instead of the number-- for example, "colorspace.shtml/384" will generate the colorspace named 'Maroon.' Where more than one color name can be associated with a colorspace number, the name will be chosen at random from among the several names. It should be noted that only numbers, not names, can be used to generate colorspaces. See the graphic entitled color Dictionary for information on named colors.
A pictorial index of all 768 colorspaces is incorporated into a piece of browser art entitled Color Portal.
