Web Design and the Red, White, and Blue.. and whatever?

[vakkotaur]

There is a web site I visit from time to time. One of the graphics on the site is a U.S. flag, which is just fine as the site is run by a fellow who has served in the military and is for him to express his opinions.

What gets me is that that the graphic is not a simple red, white, and blue rendition of the flag. It only almost is. The blue field is indeed blue. The stars, which are just dots at the small size of the graphic, are indeed white. The red stripes are indeed red. All good so far. But where there should be white stripes there are not white stripes. Instead there is the background color. I see black stripes, or gray stripes depending upon which browser and which computer I'm using.

"But, Vakko, you override things normal people don't." you might point out. Ah, but even if I turn off my overrides and forego my choice of background color it still doesn't work. The site itself uses a cream or parchment background! So even if looked at it "as the designer intended" it's wrong. Red, white, blue, and cream? The web designer overlooked the choice of the graphic maker to use transparent rather than white stripes. Really, the graphic maker goofed by assuming a white background when he could have made the stripes the same white as the stars.

It's odd that someone made a flag graphic with transparent stripes. It's also odd that it's been up on that web site for some time with that problem. It wouldn't be difficult to fix - it's not a fancy PhotoShop effect or anything.

The lesson: Don't count on a white background if you want white in the image. That goes for any color, not just white.

Comments

[timmowarner.livejournal.com]

But, Vakko, you override things normal people don't.

[masem.livejournal.com]

More than likely (given that it's animated), the creator made the graphic on a white background, then saved as a GIF file with the white color treated as the transparent layer - it didn't matter where the white appears, all of it is transparent. This is a tricky part of making animated graphics (at least GIFs) in that you have to use a color that's close to what your expected BG will be but not already in the graphic. This is why PNG transparent images (where there's an alpha channel that describes what pixels are transparent, as opposed to color) is a better format.

The fellow running the web page would probably not have expected to seen that unless he did what you normally do (run a separate bg color), and I suspect that the original graphic design never even thought about it. You could , if you felt friendly, point the guy to a different animated flag image that does have the bg corrected, I'm sure there's one on the net easily.