Why not editable custom values?

Hello Henrik,

Thank you for your feature request.

The required functionality is logged in our ToDo list and it will be implemented in one of the next versions of RadColorPicker.

Let us know if you have any other suggestions on improving our new control.

Best regards,
Rumen
the telerik team

Will something similar to this be supported (preferably, inside a button dropdown)

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/slider/rgb2.html

The slider can be indeed re-used as Henrik suggested, but I would also like to see the smooth color picking with the mouse and circle.

Hello Johan,

Thank you for your suggestion.

Yes, we plan to provide such functionality for selecting the desired color with the mouse.


Best regards,
Rumen
the telerik team

Let me just take this opportunity to toss in the "usability" perspective on color pickers.

In all cases, the type of color picker you want to use depends entirely on your application and users. But many web developers (including myself until I conducted some tests) believe all users want to be able to pick any color from the vast spectrum.

In reality, many "average users" find such color pickers frustrating and hard to use. They think in terms of "I want red" or "dark red" or "green" and so on. They don't (usually) care to fine tune pick their color and find the task of manipulating multiple sliders and color selection tools daunting. They much prefer a short list of defined colors that closely match what they're after.

There are obvious exceptions to this guidance. If your users are "power users" (like designers or developers), it is more appropriate to give fine grained control. If your application is all about designing something (vs. let's say changing text color) it is also more appropriate to have an advanced color picker.

Thankfully, the RadColorPicker will eventually satisfy all scenarios. Just consider this advice before putting too many color choices in front users that don't need (or want) them.

Thanks~
Todd

Todd:

I agree with you to a certain degree, however I believe that users are acustomed to "standard color-pickers" where you can select from predefined colors and modify colors, either my entering a value, using RGB sliders and/or from those standard blocks of graphics showing all colors.   As a user I would feel rather limited in only being able to choose from a small amount of predefined colors, from experience these colors are never those you actually want ;-)

Well ... glad to have "raised the flag" and look forward to see the new version - just bad we have to wait until september (sigh).

Best regards,

Henrik Brinch,
TriGemini

Henrick-

To be fair, you definitely qualify as a "power user". :)

I still think you'd be surprised how many "average" users simply don't have as much concern for being able exactly specify a specific color (especially for common scenarios like changing text color, or background color, or the like). Nonetheless, there are obvious users and scenarios that do justify the more complicated color selectors and Telerik will do its best to provide support for those soon.

Really, my main point is to be sure you know your users and conduct usability tests with them before assuming they want a "geek" color picker (or similar tools). If you do that, you can't go wrong. :)

Thanks~
Todd

could i get an update on this? i installed prometheus today solely for the colorpicker. it's great, but the one major downfall is the inability to enter a custom hex value. most of my users will be totally fine with one of the pallettes provided (the default pallette, in fact, is excellent). but nearly all users have a corporate colour of some sort which they will use as the primary colour on their web site. those colours are very rarely one of the web safe colours so this is really a big deal for me and a major drawback of the colorpicker as of now.

sincerely
rob

Hi Rob,

My team is responsible for the improvements in RadColorPicker and several other products, such as RadWindow and RadEditor. Currently, we are focused on RadEditor Prometheus and our efforts are concentrated entirely on that product. The next quarter is planned for upgrades of RadUpload and RadSpell. Most probably RadColorPicker will receive an upgrade in the first quarter of the next year.

If I understand correctly, you want a way to enter a hex value for a color using the UI of the color picker. This is not possible, but if you do not need to allow your users to alter the custom colors, you could add them to the palette:
<telerik:radcolorpicker runat="server" id="RadColorPicker1"
 <telerik:colorpickeritem title="Telerik" value="#82ff2b" />
 ...
</telerik:radcolorpicker>

Will this work for you?

Greetings,
Valeri Hristov (Senior Developer, MCSD)
the Telerik team

Sorry, that will not help at all. There is no way to predict the colors our clients will want to choose. I'm really very disappointed about this. I just cannot understand why you would implement a color picker without this facility. I agree with the notes above regarding the slider controls and a color wheel, etc. These are completely pointless as anyone who requires such fine control over their color will always use a graphics program to select it. But it is ESSENTIAL to be able to input a HEX (or RGB, personally I prefer HEX) color which the user has copied from a graphics program like Photoshop. Without this ability the control is severely limited in its use. Not only that, but this function was promised in this thread, which is why i went to the trouble of implementing it in the first place.

Isn't there any way to hotfix a simple text input box into the control? Please dont attempt to make it more complex than that, it simply is not needed.

rob

Rob-

I think the functionality you're looking for is readily available via the ColorPicker's API. When we start talking about entering a color value vs. "browsing" or "picking" a color value, the standard UI concept of a textbox is the ideal entry mechanism. That means you could easily place a textbox near a RadColorPicker to accept custom values and then use JavaScript and the ColorPicker's client-side API to set the custom color. Take a look at this online demo for a similar idea:

http://www.telerik.com/DEMOS/ASPNET/Prometheus/ColorPicker/
Examples/ClientSideAPI/DefaultCS.aspx

Let me know if that helps.

-Todd

Thanks for your input Todd. That's a good compromise.
I'd still love to see that input box added to the popup to keep things nice and tidy ... but this works for me.

Cheers,
rob

Rob-

I understand your point and I'm glad to hear that this alternative solution will work for you. I agree that it would be nice to have an optional textbox for entering custom values in the colorpicker's popup. Perhaps a property can be added in a future version- something like EnableCustomColor- that adds this behavior.

Thanks for contributing the idea to the community and for the great feedback.

-Todd

Hi,

What's the status on adding a textbox for hex values to the control itself? The ColorPicker is severely limited without this functionality.
Sure, one can add a textbox to the page itself as Todd says, but that is not ideal, and worse, what about the ColorPicker in the Editor?
In my scenario, my customers are businesses that have specific color schemes they want to use, and if I have to enter HTML-view in the Editor to change the font or background color for them then that sort of defeats the purpose of having a user-friendly editor...

If no such feature is planned, is there a "hack" to make this work well in the editor?

Regards,
TJ

Hi Tommy,
As Valeri already stated, this feature for the ColorPicker is added to the TODO list for Q1 2008.

Regarding your request for the RadEditor - we have no plans for implementing such feature. For the time being, you can create a custom tool that will provide the required functionality.

Regards,
Tsvetie
the Telerik team

I'm very glad to hear that this functionality is scheduled for the Q1 2008 release. I too have a strong need for my clients to be able to somehow select any colour value from the full RGB spectrum. And I may have many colour pickers on a page - I wouldn't want to have to do a textbox hack for each of them.
Thankyou for being responsive to user requirements.

Did this functionality make the Q1 2008 release?

If not, when might we expect it?

Hi Scott,

I am afraid this feature is still not implemented - due to other features for the rest of the controls and functionality that had to be implemented with higher priority, we decided to postpone that one.

These days we are finalizing our TODO list for the Q2 release and priorities are being set. Once this is done I will be able to provide more information here.  


All the best,
Svetlina
the Telerik team

Did this functionality make it into Q2 2008?

If not is it likely to make it into Q3 2008?

Hi,
I'm still keen on this capability as well. I'm disappointed that after this thread being active for a year and a half the feature is still not implemented.
Clayton.

See also:
http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/thread/b311D-bkahat.aspx

Hi guys-

Hi,
I have attached the code you need in order to implement Todd's suggestion. There are two cases for the RadColorPicker based on the value of the ShowIcon property, that is why I have attached two projects.

Best wishes,
Tsvetie
the Telerik team

Are there changes due for the colorpicker in Q1 2009?

Yes there are! In fact, the feature discussed in this thread will officially be part of RadColorPicker in Q1 2009. You can see the changes now in the Q1 2009 beta demos:

Hi Todd,

Thanks for that it is looking good!

Do you know if it is possible to have to have the hex input field present for colorpickers in the editor? e.g. BackgroundColor and ForeColor?

The RadEditor does use the Telerik RadColorPicker, so this functionality should be available with the Q1 release. I'm not sure if it will be hte default behavior, though. I'm going to have to check on that.

Hi,
the changes to allow the entry of any hex value or picking from RGB sliders look fantastic. I'm very excited to finally have this capability.
Clayton

Hi all,

I would like to add a small correction to what Todd said.
At present Telerik RadEditor does not use RadColorPicker for its own color pickers. The editor is implemented for maximum performance and has its own version of the toolbars and its own color  picker - scaled down and tuned only for being used in the editor (and not in variety of scenarios such as RadColorPicker and RadToolBar, for example).

The article provided by Todd is just the thing you need, however.
Please note, that while the color picker dialog there currently uses a color picker from Yahoo Widgets, we will rework it soon to use Telerik RadColorPicker. The RadColorPicker just got a second mode for picking colors - using 3 RadSliders, and we plan to soon introduce a third mode (also allowing for millions of colors).

Best wishes,
Tervel
the Telerik team

Do you have a date on this release for the new color picker?  I need it yesterday :)

Hey Mark-