Yellow hex value slightly off in sdk documentation?

Hi

On https://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/monkey-c/doc/Toybox/Graphics.html it lists:

COLOR_YELLOW = 0xFFAA00
Yellow

But the hex value for yellow should be 0xFFFF00, right? If I use this hex value for my datafield, it should work, right?

It works on the simulator, and I haven't tried it on my watch, but figured maybe this is significant. The COLOR_YELLOW and COLOR_ORANGE defaults give what look to me like orange and dark orange - but maybe it's my monitor quality! I'm asking because I am targeting a range of different watches for my datafield, from Forerunner 235 to Edge.

If anyone can explain the reason for the discrepancy I would be interested in knowing why, thanks!

UPDATE: this "correct" hex value for yellow appears to still produce the orange-ish 0xFFAA00 color on some of the round simulated watches so maybe that's why. I hope if I use the FFFF00 hex value it will automatically show yellow or orange on the watches; we'll see, happy with either but want yellow for those that can show it

MoxyRoger over 8 years ago

Check out the UXGuide Bitmaps section and Appendix A. Some devices have 16, 64, or 65536 color palettes available.

jim_m_58 over 8 years ago

Another thing to note, is in the sim, things might not quite like they do on a device. The display technology is quite different - colors will look brighter, pixels are bigger, the monitor settings might be a bit off, etc. The yellow might look fine on the device but look a bit orange in the sim as you noticed. One thing that I noticed early on, was that red text on a back background looked fine in the sim, but was a bit are to read on a real device, for example.

The good thing, is using the standard colors, they pretty much look the same between different devices, so once you see one, you have a really good idea how they will look on all. When I was starting, I put together a simple app that I could sideload and check out colors/color combos on the device itself. Today, with app-settings, you can just download something from the store that allows color customization, and using your phone, change colors while you're running the app to see how things really look quite easily.

And as roger said, there is the 16 vs 64 vs 65536 color thing. But if you use more than the 16 for text/background, it might make porting a bit complicated ("what does one of the 64 colors other than the basic 16 look like on a 16 color device?")

Former Member over 8 years ago

The Toybox.Graphics.COLOR_??? constants correspond directly to the colors that are available on our most restrictive devices that support only 16 (actually 14) colors. When selecting a color, the ConnectIQ VM will select the closest color to the value provided that is available on the product. If you prefer to use 0xFFFF00, you can select this color, but it will get mapped to 0xFFAA00 on products that do not support it.

As Jim stated, this color may not appear exactly the same on the display technology used in our wearables as it does on your computer monitor.