New in Backpack: Customize your color scheme Feb 07 2009
18 comments Latest by jd
We just released a really great update to Backpack. Now you can completely customize your color scheme! Whether you want to personalize your individual account or brand your business account, this feature is a lot of fun.


You can set your own colors for the header, the links in the header, the sidebar, and also the general link color. The color customizer uses the same beautiful picker we released for Basecamp last year. And you can preview each color choice live, so you can be sure each color fits perfectly with the rest.
To customize your color scheme, just click the “Settings” link. Once you’re there you’ll also find a new selection of preset color schemes (by our designer Jamie) to give you inspiration. Thanks for your continued support and enjoy customizing your colors in Backpack!
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18 comments so far
Ricky Irvine 07 Feb 09
Hey this looks nice! Finally!
When I saw this it occurred to me how cool it’d be if we could select just one color and then by some magical computational algorithm the rest of the colors for the scheme would be chosen automatically, based on the wheel and theories of complementary colors. Overkill?
Pedro Melo 07 Feb 09
For a future version, something like what Dabble does would be nice:
http://blog.dabbledb.com/2007/04/white—or-green.html
They pick the color scheme for you based on your company logo that you upload to them.
Best regards,
Jeremy Pinat 07 Feb 09
My dreams come true <3 Thank you ;)
Sam B 07 Feb 09
I think I’m coming to look forward to Backpack New Feature announcements more than Apple New Product announcements. Good job ya’ll!
Neil Kelty 07 Feb 09
Awesome! Now we just need this for Highrise.
Brooks Jordan 07 Feb 09
Really nicely executed. Thanks.
Jay C 07 Feb 09
Can we get this in Campfire next?
Jason 08 Feb 09
While you’re on a color kick… color-codable task categories in Highrise would be great!
Alex 08 Feb 09
Dear Ryan, I wish you to post your thoughts about why color customization is a good thing for Backpack, and why this feature was prioritized in such manner (postponed for such time or implemented before others user requests or before others).
Thank you very much,
Alex
Keith 09 Feb 09
If only we could do this for calendar colors. ;)
Michael 09 Feb 09
I like it a lot but I also got used to the colours I was using. They aren’t one of the standard choices anymore :(.
SS 09 Feb 09
Michael, your old color scheme should have been preserved as a “Custom colors” setting. If it wasn’t, please write support and we’ll help you out.
matt 09 Feb 09
I’m confused. Were a lot of customers asking for this? This seems to be very much not in the keeping things simple / real direction of the the products.
Keith 09 Feb 09
Matt
My guess is that it was well requested in Basecamp where people will often brand their pages. The 37s guys probably figured an easy way to make it work in Backpack and ported it as a “nice to have” feature.
I like it even though I have little use for it because after staring at the same 2 or 3 color schemes for a few years now…I am happy to be able to mix it up a bit with my pink, yellow & teal combo!
Mike 10 Feb 09
WYSIWYG editing next, please.
! 10 Feb 09
Thank god. This was number one my wishlist for backpack. Great job guys!
Richard 10 Feb 09
This does seem like a bit of a conflict with Getting Real. Weren’t the other color scheme choices “good enough”? I’m curious why the decision to allow for any color? Branding concerns like suggested above?
jd 12 Feb 09
I HATE , HATE, HATE that style of color picker. It is the antithesis of easy and simple. I’m really surprised this is what they went with. It’s literally impossible to pick the same color twice (without the hex values). The 200+ “web-safe” colors are more than enough for the vast majority of applications.
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