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Subject:Re: Jump colours for help From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET> Date:Mon, 8 Jul 1996 14:42:00 EST
At 01:15 PM 7/8/96 GMT, you wrote:
>Colleen Dancer (02) 333-1862 (DANCER -dot- COLLEEN -at- a2 -dot- abc -dot- net -dot- au) wrote:
>: Can someone tell me if that horrible green is really the windows standard
>: help jump colour and if so what rgb value it is. I can't get hold of a
>: copy of the standards today.
>"There is one small problem: testing shows that lime green is the color
>that works best for color-blind or color-confused users who don't
>actually see color, but rather notice a change in hue from surrounding
>text. Red appears as black to most of these users. Other colors in the
>standard Windows color palette may change hue for some viewers but not
>for others. Removing the solid or dotted underline from a text
>hotspot, or changing the color used for hotspots, might mean that some
>users never see that the hostpot is there.
>"And if you want to argue that there aren't very many of these people
>with special needs, and you should be able to use purple hotspots if
>you want to, then realize that you're also arguing against the value
>of giving users a consistent interface across multiple documents from
>multiple publishers. Do you have to learn a new set of colors for
>traffic lights in every town you drive through? No -- so why should
>online document users have to learn a new set of hotspot colors for
>every document they open?"
It's what we preach to clients: don't challenge the user's expectations
without a darned good reason. It's also why we counsel clients and students
NEVER to use color as cues, because of just those problems, compounded by
the options users have to turn off or change color schemes.
If anybody is still interested, the rgb commonly used is (0,127,0).
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
FrameMaker support ForeHelp support
Makers of DuoFrame, giving you online help and paper
documentation from a single parent FrameMaker document.
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