Eye Droppin’

Quick hits! There is a new web API called EyeDropper:

if ('EyeDropper' in window) {
  const eyeDropper = new EyeDropper();
  try {
    // This has gotta be triggered by a user interaction,
    // so consider this pseudo-code.
    const result = await eyeDropper.open();
    const colorHexValue = result.sRGBHex;
  } catch (err) {
    // The user escaped the eyedropper mode.
  }
}

• Here’s a very good blog post intro on it.
• It’s only in Chrome’n’friends right now.
• I wish I knew better how to watchdog APIs like this. Looks like it originally came from Edge, then became a community group thing, which is where the draft spec is, which went through a public review before shipping was announced (in Chrome), and now it’s live. Seems like a good process, but also that Chrome can really steamroll right through this process essentially all by themselves. Other browsers really don’t even have to say a word and it still ships. Mixed feelings, but mostly positive, especially because this is such a little bonus feature and not something that I’d consider ultra critical to any web app.
• You can pick colors from anywhere on your entire screen, which is great. It’ll improve tools like Figma, which has a color picker, but is currently limited to picking off the canvas.
• It’s already being used in production apps, like Slides.com and Polypane, improving UX. (via Bramus)
• There is a Chrome Extention. (again, via Bramus)
• When you do <input type="color">, the UI popup thingy for that (platform provided) color picker is in it too (at least on macOS), so there is always that. Makes me think that anywhere you use <input type="color"> it would make sense to also offer a progressively-enhanced button right next to it to jump right to the color picker. Hash tag free web component idea.

source https://css-tricks.com/eye-droppin/