Gradient

To start with, the dictionary provides us with the next definition. The gradient is the steepness of a slope that is commonly measured in one of these 3 ways:

1 First of all, slope angle is the angle line, path or surface makes with the ground of horizontal (which is called the grade line) that is expressed in degrees of grads. To illustrate, it could be a five-degree gradient.

2 Secondly, it is the ratio of the vertical distance to the actual distance along the slope. For example, a gradient of 1 in 4 means a vertical distance of 1 unit for 4 units along the slope that is expressed as 1 / 4 grade of 25 % grade.

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3 In addition, it also can be the ratio of the vertical distance to the horizontal distance.

Without a doubt, many of you already know from school that the gradient is a vector-valued function, as opposed to a derivative, which is scalar-valued. If f(x1, ..., xn) is a differentiable, real-valued function of several variables, its gradient is the vector whose components are the n partial derivatives of f. What else could be the gradient related to? The web design, of course! Actually, these days gradients are making a sneaky comeback. For a while they belonged to the world of Miami Vice and Tequila Sunrise, then they added depth to 1980’s magazines, then there was Geocities–ok, let’s not dwell on the past. Thus, nowadays gradients are being used on the web in bold fashion; mixing highly saturated colors for extremely rich effects (though it’s not to everyone’s taste). As you can see, the gradient stores all the partial derivative info of a multivariable function. Still, remember that gradient is more than a simple storage device, as it has several awesome interpretations and many, many uses. What is more, today gradients are popular to be used for making the unusual and creative backgrounds and a lot of modern online projects prefer to use them in order to stay unique. Unquestionably, such thing as background has always had an important impact on the website’s design. They help form a website’s appearance and feel, establish groupings, and assign priority, and they have a considerable influence on a website’s usability. Within CSS, element backgrounds can be a solid color, an image, a gradient, or a combination of these. All in all, gradients are a nice way to add interest, color, and even depth to your web design. You can use the same color in many shades, many shades of many colors or several other combinations you may think of. You can go linear or radial. The point is that gradients are beautiful and can give your website a very unique style. You can use a cool gradient for the whole website design, or only in the header, footer or just in a couple elements of it, but I’m pretty sure about one thing: combining the right colors and shades will make you a gradient lover! Seeing that, you will start using gradients all over, maybe even at your bathroom, room wall!

Well, now you know the meaning of the gradient. Still, I have prepared for you a list of cool articles that may also be helpful. These links will show you a lot of colorful, inspiring and simply beautiful posts that introduce one an amazing result of using the gradient in web design. Thus, if you would like to get more information about the subject of this post and also view out these adorable designs, don’t forget to view out the next pages:20 websites that prove gradients are making comeback, gradient making comeback, gradients are all over the web, UI gradients created for web designers, setting backgrounds and gradients, what makes gradients in graphic design look attractive and what is the best way to use them, best designs with gradient, free PhotoShop gradient sets and40 free PhotoShop gradient packs.

All in all, don’t hesitate to leave all your thoughts and questions in the comments below this post. Furthermore, I would like you to tell me your own definition of the gradient! Maybe you have something to add? For these simple reasons, just leave your comment below!

Finally, it’s time to learn other terms that are related to the gradient!

Related terms:

References and further reading: WWW, web browser, color wheel, hue, saturation, and brightness, RGB, CMYK.

• World Wide Web(WOW) is a network of online content that is formatted in HTML and accessed via HTTP. Basically, this term refers to all the interlinked HTML pages that can be accessed over the Internet. By the way, the World Wide Web was originally designed in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee while he was a contractor at CERN. Needless to say, today World Wide Web is most often referred to simply as "the Web."
• Web browser is the name of the software program that allows a web user to locate, access, and display different web pages. As you may know, these days in common usage a web browser is usually shortened to "browser." Talking about their main functions, browsers are used primarily for displaying and accessing websites on the Internet, as well as other content created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible Markup Language (XML), etc.
• Color wheel(or color circle) is the name of the basic tool, which was made for a pleasant colors combining. Historically, the first circular color diagram was created in 1666 by well-known Sir Isaac Newton. As you can see on the image below, the color circle was made the way that one may take almost each pair of the colors, included to the color wheel, and they will look awesome together. Needless to say, during the last years there were made a lot of variations of the basic design. Still, these days the shown color wheel, which consists of 12 colors (based on the RYB, or artistic, color model) is the most useful and popular one.
• Hue, saturation, and brightness are the aspects of color in the red, green and blue (RGB) color scheme. In general, these terms are mostly used in reference to the color of every pixel in a CRT (cathode ray tube) display. To continue, we can specify all the possible colors according to hue, saturation and, of course, brightness, (that may also be called brilliance) just as the colors can be shown in terms of the R, G and B components.
• RGB means red, green and blue. To make a long story short, the RGB term refers to a system for representing the colors to be used on a computer display. Thus, red, green, and blue can be combined in various proportions to obtain any color in the visible spectrum. Levels of R, G, and B can each range from 0 to 100 percent of full intensity. That is why each level is represented by the range of decimal numbers from 0 to 255 (256 levels for each color), equivalent to the range of binary numbers from 00000000 to 11111111, or hexadecimal 00 to FF. Logically, the total number of available colors is 256 x 256 x 256, or 16,777,216 possible colors.
• CMYK(cyan, magenta, yellow, key) is an abbreviation for the name of scheme, which combines the primary pigments. Thus, C means cyan (aqua), M means magenta (pink), Y is for yellow and K stands for key. As you may know, these days K color means black in modern printing world. Still, things have not always gone this way. Historically, there were other colors used for Key: brown and even blue.