Color Coder II – A Free Downloadable Application to Detect HTML Hexadecimal, RGB and HSL Color Codes

Color Coder II is a small, easy to use, and very helpful application that translates the color you see into the RGB and hexadecimal codes you need to create web pages and other programs.

Color Coder II allows you to choose colors several different ways. You can set decimal RGB (red, green, blue) values or you can enter the six-character hexadecimal code.

There are also two dropdown lists. One shows the 141 "X11 Colors" recognized by the W3C organization. These colors can be used by name (instead of code) in web pages, CSS stylesheets and Windows applications. It even includes PapayaWhip! This list can be sorted by color name or by hue. A second list shows the current System Colors based on how your version of Windows is set up.

There is also a button that brings up the Windows color picker dialog. Use it to find a new color, or edit the one you've already selected.

Once you've found the color you're looking for, click the "copy" button and Color Coder II will copy the hexadecimal or RGB codes to the Windows clipboard for easy pasting into the program or web page that you're designing.

Still another way to select a color is by using the Hue, Saturation and Lightness (HSL) sliders. This method offers a very intuitive way of adjusting colors. Once the desired color is found, click the copy button in the HSL area to save the settings to the Windows clipboard.

Perhaps the most useful and most powerful feature of Color Coder II is the "eye-dropper" that lets you pick up any color on your screen, including colors on web pages in your browser, icons on your desktop or programs running in other windows. It operates just like the eye-dropper in Photoshop, except this eye-dropper goes everywhere and can pick up any color that's visible on your screen.

You can set the eye-dropper to pick up an area as small as one pixel, or expand the pickup area up to 15 pixels square and receive an average of all the colors found in that area. This averaging feature is helpful when you want to find a color that goes well with a selected area of a photograph that may be a mixture of many colors.

Color Coder II is easy to use. All you need to know is contained in a few pop-up tooltips, like the one shown above. There are only four buttons:

The coolest feature of Color Coder II (in my humble opinion) is the "Eye-Dropper." It's the real reason I wrote the program. Too many times I saw an interesting color on another web page or in some other window on my screen, but it was often a case of tedious trial and error to figure out the exact codes for that color. With Color Coder II, just click on the eye-dropper and drag it to the color you want. Release the mouse button and your chosen color is loaded into Color Coder II. You will instantly see the RGB and hexadecimal codes. Plus, if the color is one of the HTML named colors and/or a Windows system color, Color Coder will find and display the color name as well. If you right-click on the eye-dropper, you can select the amount of area you want Color Coder II to sample, from a 1 pixel square up to a 15 pixel square. When the sampling area is set to greater than one pixel, Color Coder II will average the colors of all the pixels in the sample area. This is a great way to get a usable estimate of the color of areas (such as in photographs) that contain many different colors that the eye blends together.

The "Color Chart" button displays the Windows color picker dialog box. You can use the color picker to select one of the stock colors, or use it to edit the color you've already selected. You can use the color picker dialog to lighten or darken your selected color, or to experiment with different hues. When you are satisified with the results, click "OK" and the new color is loaded in Color Coder II.

The "Copy" button allows you to copy the color codes to the Windows clipboard for easy pasting into the application or web page you are working on. Left-click copies the hexadecimal code; right-click copies the RGB values.

The "Help" button displays the help file (downloadable below), which basically repeats the information on this page about the application works.

A second "Copy" button in the Hue, Saturation, Lightness (HSL) area allows you to copy the HSL color codes to the Windows clipboard.

System Requirements & Installation:

In order to run Color Coder II, you must have Microsoft's .NET Framework installed on your computer. If you are running a recent version of Windows XP, the .NET Framework is probably already installed on your machine. Otherwise you can obtain it for free from Microsoft. If you are not sure whether or not you have the .NET Framework installed, you can use this test page. (Note: You must be using Internet Explorer for the test page to work.)
Color Coder II is a simple, stand-alone program. Just copy it to some place on your hard drive where you can find it, and you're ready to go. If you want Color Coder II to appear in your Windows program menus or on a shortcut on your desktop, you will have to do that yourself (which, of course, is no big deal). To uninstall this version, simply delete it from your hard drive.
In addition to the application file, there is also a small help file available. Download the help file and copy it to the same directory as main application file.

Download the Files: (right-click and select "Save Target As ..." or "Save Link As ...")

The main application file (120 KB): ColorCoder.exe
The help file (58 KB): ColorCoderHelp.chm

The Legal Stuff: Color Coder II is distributed free of charge to anyone who chooses to download it. Color Coder II is made available "as is" and without warranties of any kind, express or implied. It has been thoroughly tested on my Windows XP and Windows 2000 development platforms and has never crashed, hung or caused any other problems. It has not, however, been tested on all the other available platforms. Because it is based on the .NET Framework, Color Coder II should run just as well on all machines that have the Framework installed. If you run into any problems – or if you have suggestions for new features or improvements – please e-mail me using the link at the bottom of the page.