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Fucking Color Picker

tonymccoy.me

51–60 of 140 posts

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually faster to develop in Electron than with QT and C++? It has been over a decade, but I remember it being both straight-forward and pleasant to support Linux, Windows, and MacOS. I vaguely recall supporting Solaris too.

Web developers using Electron probably count in the time to learn C++ vs the fact that they already know web stack. ;)

As a C++ developer who had to learn Javascript and Vue to write an Electron app, it was still faster than writing the same app in QT (which I used before).

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#52
post #8

Seriously there was no existing color picker app for Windows alraady?

I use Pixie[1], which works really well even on Windows 7 and 10. It's an 11kB portable app. [1] http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php

Have been using Pixie since forever on Windows. Neat little tool.

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#53
post #42

I just use ShareX on windows which has color picker tool. Also you can simply create a system-wide keybind for it.

I bound mine to the middle click action of the taskbar.

but I also overrode the tooltip text on the screenshot cursor to display the RGB hex, as a ctrl+c will copy whatever is in this box

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#54
post #8

Seriously there was no existing color picker app for Windows alraady?

I use Pixie[1], which works really well even on Windows 7 and 10. It's an 11kB portable app. [1] http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php

Thank you, this is beautiful.

There are a couple of other cool tools on the page too that I weren't aware of, like this:

http://www.nattyware.com/fontster.php

It's a HTML + Javascript desktop application that weighs 2 K. And it even uses native widgets and looks and feels like a real application. Isn't that something... ;)

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#55
If anyone is put off by it being an Electron app and are running Windows, here's an AHK[0] script to get the hex code of the pixel color under your cursor and copy it to your clipboard:

---

#h::

MouseGetPos, MouseX, MouseY

PixelGetColor, color, %MouseX%, %MouseY%

StringLower, color, color

clipboard := SubStr(color, 3)

---

It's bound to Win+h (hex color) by default.

It's not fancy, but it works. You just run it in the background and hit the hot key to copy the color whenever you want to. There is no UI.

What's neat about it is the entire source code fits in a tweet: https://twitter.com/nickjanetakis/status/1108825825116332032

And it uses 0.6MB of RAM when running.

[0]: https://www.autohotkey.com/

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this 450 line program could have been written in whatever native language you want with probably 3x the code and time spent, but why would you? Developer time has been more expensive than hardware for a decade now. Everyone here loves to virtue signal about how horrible programs that take 0.01% of the space of a normal SSD and 1% of the RAM are, but the fact is that it does not matter at all, and you wouldn't ev…

> Developer time has been more expensive than hardware for a decade now. How about developer time of 1 person vs. hardware (and electricity, CO2 emissions...) of 1 million users?

> vs. hardware (and electricity, CO2 emissions...) of 1 million users?

Do you actually have a million users? Can that developer time be spent saving even more hardware or human costs elsewhere?

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this 450 line program could have been written in whatever native language you want with probably 3x the code and time spent, but why would you? Developer time has been more expensive than hardware for a decade now. Everyone here loves to virtue signal about how horrible programs that take 0.01% of the space of a normal SSD and 1% of the RAM are, but the fact is that it does not matter at all, and you wouldn't ev…

Ah yes, the good ol' "Efficiency doesn't matter on my hardware in my situation" argument. Brought to you by the same culture that ends up with devs being surprised most of their users in fact don't have 8-core 32G machines with 4k screens, unlike all of their colleagues and immediate peers. For that matter, I did notice the size, as I'm browsing on a mobile connection (travelling) and the 55M color picker utility wou…

I would in fact argue that until we are at a point of diminishing return of improving hardware that it is good that software is becoming more and more "bloated", because that's the only incentive to keep researching more efficient hardware.

Phones for example have basically been unchanged for 5 years regarding performance, because while hardware has drastically improved the apps have become heavier in proportion for superficial new features. Same goes for internet connections.

As another example I'd say that the recent resurgence of deep learning has mostly come from (or at least was catalysed by) cheap, affordable GPUs, which only exist because gamers wanted better and better graphics.

Re: Fucking Color Picker

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually faster to develop in Electron than with QT and C++? It has been over a decade, but I remember it being both straight-forward and pleasant to support Linux, Windows, and MacOS. I vaguely recall supporting Solaris too.

Web developers using Electron probably count in the time to learn C++ vs the fact that they already know web stack. ;)

Of they can just use QML and use JavaScript and a declarative language for their UI.
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