What was your first hex code?

I remember it like it was yesterday: my first hex code! πŸ™‚

It was back in 1998 when I had just started to learn HTML and was creating my first web site. I was looking for a smooth nice shade of yellow to go with the feel I was after.

So, the first hex code I ever learned by heart, and has not forgotten since, was #ffffa2.

What was your first hex code?

40 Comments

  • Phil Nash says:

    I can't remember my first hexcode, but before that I remember my first worded colour. I really liked dodgerblue, which turns out as #1E90FF. How nostalgic.

  • Jakob Neander says:

    Haha, great nostalgia for a friday afternoon. I can't remember my first hex code, I think it was some kind of blue. The earliest one I still remember (and one I know I'll never forget) is #cc0001, a red that was used for one of our sites for many years.

  • Dan says:

    As a fresh programmer in the mainframe environment back in -84, i came accross '0xC7', wich means system crash.

    Never forgot that one πŸ™‚

  • Matt Robin says:

    #000

    …once you go #000 – you never go back! πŸ˜‰

  • It was back in 1998 too. I had a homepage similar to every other homepage back then, on which I wanted to have the same hover effects as a friend had on his homepage; something similar to a telescopic sight. For that, something called Zee Ess Ess was used (hacker stuff …), the code looked like this: a:hover {text-decoration:underline overline; cursor: crosshair; color:#00EE00;}

    Something extremly green. πŸ™‚

  • Binny V A says:

    I believe it is white – #ffffff – the 6 letter code. The news that I can do it in 3 came much later.

  • *sigh* I feel so old… When I saw "first hex code", I started trying to remember what the first assembly language program I'd written was, and whether it was for a Z80 or a 6502 microprocessor. Does hand-tweaking 3 bytes to bypass Elite's ultra-annoying "LensLok" copy protection scheme on my Commodore 64 count? I think that was my first, or at least the first that I worked out on my own. I'd been playing with disassemblers and hex editors for quite a while before that.

    If you're talking about hexadecimal representations of RGB tuples for specifying colors, then I can't say I ever learned any of them, per se. I'm pretty comfortable with hex in general and had been doing RGB color manipulation for quite some time before this newfangled web thingy came along, so I can usually do pretty well just devising them as I go.

  • Wictor says:

    My first hex-code was 0x5C, long before you wrote colors using hex values. It was when I was programming C (I'm proud admit I came out as a geek early) in my early days and you had to translate the backslash character to the numeric keyboard and use the alt key and press 9 and then 2 (alt-9-2). This was the way to get the character on swedish keyboards, before the AltGr key was invented.

  • dAN says:

    #66ccff

  • dAN says:

    …that's the earliest one I can remember – see it in action here

  • Andreas says:

    #369 – the classic.

  • chovy says:

    I can't recall, most likely #000 or #fff πŸ™‚

  • mdmadph says:

    Blegh — I thought you meant real hex code. πŸ˜›

    My first experience with Hex was working with application development for Macintosh computers circa 1995.

  • Hm, maybe #c0c0c0, which I believe was the default grey color of Netscape 0.96.

  • RobertDM says:

    Whoopy! the first time I learned about hexcode dates back to the days of the Philips MSX home computer my dad brought home from work. I didn't have any fixed memory, harddrive or whatever: so every piece of code, game, program you wented to do, you'd have to type the complete code first, get out all the typos before executing and then when you were finished and turned it of everything was gone so the next time you had to start typing all over again… later on we got a cassetteplayer to record our programs so they could be reloaded…the good old days… πŸ™‚

  • Erik says:

    #000, then #fff a close second…like ten seconds later!

  • Pete B says:

    #cccccc – a distinguished gray

  • B0ris says:

    cd 21… from MS-DOS assembly in debug.com πŸ™‚

  • Steven Clark says:

    #f00 (or #ff0000) for the brightest pencil red. When testing that's the colour I still put in to check borders and backgrounds while figuring out layouts… or just the word red…

    Garish, lively and loud.. perfect for debugging. However if there's a hangover involved I moved straight to the keyword cyan and ignore Hex entirely lol…

    But garish yellow? Mmmm…

  • #006600 because it was the nearest "web-safe colour" (remember those?) to the shade of green ink I used the very first time I set metal type and used a printing press.

    That had been in 1975, in the same week that I first used a computer.

    There were some good extra-curricular activities at my school πŸ™‚

  • #036 and #048 being shades of blue.

  • BARTdG says:

    The first hex code for a colour was probably <code>#800000</code> (maroon?) but I must have used hex numbers some 20 years ago, when I programmed the Commodore 64. I 'm sure I learnt hex back then, but can't remember what I needed it for.

  • Ian Edward says:

    I figured #000 would be a first for just about everyone.

    For the longest time, I was in love with either #C00000 or #00C000.

    Now I find every excuse I can to use #DEFACE. And that's what happens when vandals become designers…or vice versa.

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Thanks for sharing everyone!

    Silly me only thought of color representation, so thanks for everyone pointing out other various usage! πŸ™‚

  • Mike Hunt says:

    I just wanted to say fuck on one of your pages, since you closed the discussion over on the clickonce extension entry. It’s a fucking great word.

    kthxbye

  • Mi says:

    it was something like #6633cc .. or was it #cc6633 .. some variation with these numbers makes a nice shade of rosy pink <3

    it is #cc3366

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Mike,

    Actually, it's not the word itself I have anything against, it's when you think that by using it, you become more trustworthy and eloquent.

    Mi,

    Nice! πŸ™‚

  • Lea Verou says:

    Oh, I can't remember. Colors and color models always fascinated me so one of my first computer programs (using Visual Basic 6 back then…) was a color picker (which also calculated hex colors if I recall correctly). That was long before I got involved with web development. So the answer probably is "looots of them" πŸ˜›

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Lea,

    That counts too. πŸ™‚

  • Tobbe says:

    Interesting idea. Sadly I don't remember my first hex color, but I think I know which one I've used the most (except black and white then); #EFEFEF. No matter what design I work on I always end up needing a light shade of gray and that one always manages to fit right in. Not too dark, not too bright. πŸ™‚

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Tobbe,

    Yes, that's an old favorite! πŸ™‚

  • Jonny Parks says:

    I remember my first experience with hex code when I purchased a Roland digital keyboard synthesizer and my first computer an Atari 1040st in 1991. In order to control the functions of the synth via computer you had to send the messages in hex code. The code that I remember most was to reset the instrument to General Midi Standard which was (F0 7E 7F 09 01 F7). Each 2 digit code addressed a certain function of the instrument. Same as each 2 digit color code is for Red Green Blue

    First, I had to learn to convert decimal (counting by 10s) into hexadecimal (counting by 16s). Also, hex code starts with zero so if your counting 16 it would be (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F) then back to zero. I hope you were aware enough to notice that when you count this way you end up at 15, this is because you started with zero. When you reach 15 or 0F hex then you would carry the 1 over to the second place to get 16 which is 10 hex. So if you want 31 it would be 1F hex (1×16)+15. If you want 64 it would be 40 hex (4×16)+0.

    Example: My musical instruments volume display went from 0 to 100 however, the hex code was 0 to 127 so in order to make the volume 50 I would have to send the code 63 which is 3F hex.

    Another example are color codes:

    If you have the hex color #CC6633 the RGB equivilant is.

    Red: CC (12×16)+12=204

    Green: 66 (6×16)+6=102

    Blue: 33 (3×16)+3=51

    This conversion is helpful to know if your using a paint program like Corel or Photoshop because these programs use RGB not hex and the range is 0 to 255 when you specify a color. so if you wanted the same color for your web page you would heve to convert it to hex.

    Well now that your totally confused, don't blame me, I was just trying to help! If you really want to blame someone click over here: The binary numeral system

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Jonny,

    Wow, thanks for sharing! πŸ™‚

  • Tabitha Ramone says:

    Haha #99ccff! And of course #000000 and #ffffff.

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Tabitha,

    Nice, thanks for sharing!

  • RobShaver says:

    Around about 1975. I bought a single board computer called the KIM-1; a demonstrator board from MOS Technology for it's eight bit microprocessor.

    Here's a picture

    It had a hex readout for address and data, plus a hex keyboard for data entry. I spend many hours writing programs on paper in assembly language and then hand assembling them into hex machine code. They you enter them using the keyboard one byte at a time.

    It was a simpler time … and I was in heaven.

    Peace,

    Rob:-]

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Rob,

    Maybe simpler, but definitely lesser options. πŸ™‚

    Thanks for the picture!

  • Ashish says:

    Well, we used 0xdeadbabe to initialize memory and check for memory errors later πŸ™‚

    0xdeadbeef is also pretty common

    0xbad00bad is another one ..

    Got more?

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Ashish,

    Nice ones!

  • mr. boobies says:

    0xb00b13

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