I think mtoledo's point is that variable names should have context, and not be mere appropriations of their content. For example, "theme_color" would be better than "blue" because you could use it in context among lots of different CSS definitions, and if your theme color changes, it's a single change, as opposed to changing all the "blue"s to "green"s or whatever.
I understood that part, that's why I gave the example of !primary_color. The point I'm making is that naming a variable after a color isn't necessarily a bad thing and can be a useful abstraction, and there's no reason you can't do both. I can recognize some common color hex codes, but I find it easier to work with more human readable names. If I'm looking at a site and I want to make the orange color slightly darker, will I remember that it's !color3? Or is it easier to look through for !light_orange?
I follow you isleyaardvark. I think one of the challenges of having a discussion about CSS is scope/setting. CSS is used on every different type project. If you're doing client work and building 5 page mini site (I'm not suggesting anything), your thoughts on CSS are based on a completely different use than the developer that maintains 500+ pages.
We both know CSS. But we use them entirely differently.
On a site with 500+ pages, by the time you've implemented all of your !blue to !green, or !light_orange to !dark_orange throughout your stylesheets, management will be considering another redesign.
For me, it's easier to inspect the element in Firebug and copy/search the hex code, since I get the guarantee that I'm not changing an unrelated poorly named variable.
I find that for simpler sites, naming colors after their closest tone works well, but when I have a dozen shades of the same color, I start to run out of names very quickly (e.g. it's not unusual for me for a single page to have different background boxes, zebra striped tables, subheaders, selected/hover states and an array of other details on top of the overall layout)
That's why I think names like "color3" are bad. If the orange is on headings, look for headings. If the orange is the page background, look for what represents that. I don't see a compelling reason to actually use the color name in the variable name since things should be easier to look up if the context is taken into account.
