Rebeccapurple
Those of you who aren't graphic designers probably don’t know the name
Eric Meyer, but among developers, he's kind of a big deal. Meyer is among the foremost advocates of CSS, the code that has ushered in the age of aesthetically pleasing web design. Without Meyer, CSS would be neither as well developed nor as widespread as it is, and there's a good chance that much of the web would still look like a GeoCities homepage.
Meyer's daughter Rebecca recently
lost her battle with cancer - on her birthday, no less.
In honor of Rebecca's memory and Eric's many contributions, the CSS Working Group, which is responsible for overseeing CSS specification, agreed last week to add “
Rebeccapurple”
to the official CSS specifications as the name for hex value
#663399, a shade of purple that was Rebecca's favorite color.
Originally, the color was going to be dubbed "Beccapurple," but Eric requested that the color bear his daughter's full name. “Rebecca
informed us that she was about to be a big girl of six years old, and
Becca was a baby name.”
he wrote,
“She made it to six. For almost twelve hours, she was six. So Rebecca
it is and must be.”
This is among
my favorite comments on the resolution: "Usually when I’m crying reading computer spec’s it’s out of frustration, not sadness and sympathy."
