Changelog

This document lists the changes in each release of webcolors.

Version numbering

This library currently tracks its version numbers using the YY.MM.MICRO form of Calendar Versioning (“CalVer”), in which the first two components of the version number are the (two-digit) year and (non-zero-padded) month of the release date, while the third component is an incrementing value for releases occurring in that month. For example, the first release issued in January 2025 would have a version number of 25.1.0; a subsequent release in the same month would be 25.1.1; a release the following month (February) would be 25.2.0.

The CalVer system was adopted for this library in 2024, and the first release to use a CalVer version number was 24.6.0.

API stability and deprecations

The API stability/deprecation policy for this library is as follows:

  • The supported stable public API of this library is the set of symbols which are exported by its __all__ declaration and which are documented in this documentation. For classes exported there, the supported stable public API is the set of methods and attributes of those classes whose names do not begin with one or more underscore (_) characters and which are documented in this documentation.

  • When a public API is to be removed, or undergo a backwards-incompatible change, it will emit a deprecation warning which serves as notice of the intended removal or change, and which will give a date – which will always be at least in the next calendar year after the first release which emits the deprecation warning – past which the removal or change may occur without further warning.

  • Security fixes, and fixes for high-severity bugs (such as those which might cause unrecoverable crash or data loss), are not required to emit deprecation warnings, and may – if needed – impose backwards-incompatible change in any release. If this occurs, this changelog document will contain a note explaining why the usual deprecation process could not be followed for that case.

  • This policy is in effect as of the adoption of CalVer versioning, with version 24.6.0 of this library.

Releases under CalVer

Version 24.11.0

Released November 2024

  • Supported Python versions are now 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13.

Version 24.8.0

Released August 2024

  • Added the names() function to allow retrieving lists of color names. The underlying mappings of color names/values still are not supported API; to obtain the color value corresponding to a name, use the appropriate conversion function.

Version 24.6.0

Released June 2024

  • Supported Python versions are now 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.12.

  • Running the unit tests no longer uses a third-party test runner; the standard-library unittest module’s runner is used instead.

  • Documentation of the HTML5 color algorithms has been updated to emphasize which HTML5 spec is used (the WHATWG spec, which is now the only canonical and maintained HTML5 spec) and comments in the implementations have been updated to include the latest prose description of the HTML5 algorithms from the spec. These updates do not change the behavior of the HTML5 algorithms, and are only for clarity of documentation and explanation.

  • Adopted CalVer versioning.

  • The raw mappings of color names/values are no longer publicly exposed; use the appropriate normalizing conversion functions instead of accessing the mappings directly.

Releases not under CalVer

Version 1.13

Released March 2023

  • Supported Python versions are now 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11.

  • The codebase was significantly reorganized and modernized. Public API is unchanged. Imports should continue to be directly from the top-level webcolors module; attempting to import from submodules is not supported.

  • Now packaging declaratively via pyproject.toml with PEP 517 support from setuptools.

Version 1.12

Released May 2022

  • Supported Python versions are now 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10.

Version 1.11.1

Released February 2020

  • Corrected an error regarding supported Python versions in the README file.

Version 1.11

Released February 2020

  • Python 2 has reached the end of its support cycle from the Python core team; accordingly, Python 2 support is dropped. Supported Python versions are now 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8.

Version 1.10

Released September 2019

  • Similar to the change in version 1.9 which normalized conversions to named colors for gray/grey to always use the gray variant, the other named grays of CSS3 now normalize to the gray spelling. This affects the following colors: darkgray/darkgrey, darkslategray/darkslategrey, dimgray/dimgrey, lightgray/lightgrey, lightslategray/lightslategrey, slategray/slategrey.

Version 1.9.1

Released June 2019

  • The __version__ attribute of the installed webcolors module, although not documented or referenced anywhere, was accidentally not updated in the 1.9 release. It has now been updated (and now indicates 1.9.1).

Version 1.9

Released June 2019

  • Added a set of constants to use when referring to specifications that define color names.

  • When asked to provide a color name, using the CSS3/SVG set of names, for the hexadecimal value #808080, the integer triplet rgb(128, 128, 128), or the percentage triplet rgb(50%, 50%, 50%), webcolors now always returns u'gray', never u'grey'. Previously, the behavior could be inconsistent as it depended on the Python version in use; u'gray' was picked because it was the spelling variant used in HTML 4, CSS1, and CSS2.

Version 1.8.1

Released February 2018

  • The 1.8.1 release is a repackaging of 1.8 to produce both source (.tar.gz) and binary (.whl) package formats, following reports that the source-package-only release of 1.8 was causing installation issues for some users. See issue 6 in the repository for details.

Version 1.8

Released February 2018

Version 1.7

Released November 2016

  • Drop support for Python 2.6 (Python core team no longer maintains 2.6).

  • Mark support for Python 3.4.

  • On Python 3, the use of str for all functions which take string arguments is now mandatory. Attempted use of bytes will raise an exception. On Python 2, use of bytestrings is still permitted.

Version 1.5.1

Released November 2015

  • Corrected multiple typos in documentation.

Version 1.5

Released March 2015

Version 1.4

Released February 2012

  • Integer and percentage rgb() triplets now normalized in accordance with CSS clipping rules.

  • Preparatory work for Python 3 support.

Version 1.3.1

Released October 2009

  • Documentation expanded.

  • Documentation now maintained using Sphinx.

Version 1.3

  • Documentation expanded.

Version 1.2

Released March 2009

  • Corrected the download URL in the setup.py script.

Version 1.1

Released December 2008

  • Documentation expanded.

Version 1.0

Released October 2008

  • Initial stable release of webcolors.