Easy on Eyes Colors 1

Experiments in cognitive recognition and usability have shown that the following combinations for "input" areas are relatively effective:

White Text - Purple background
White text - Blue background
White Text - Black background.
Black Text - white background.

Be careful about using COLORS that have special non-computer meanings - RED usually connotes something extremely important or a fault of some type. Don't make everything RED, in other words.

I think the main thing is to go for high contrast colors, and watch the effect on people who may be color blind (10% of the male population).

I've always found it helpful to toss a highlighted border around a text box that has the focus, and set it back to white or some neutral color when the control loses the focus. Examples are on my website.

Jim


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Dear HenryE,
Whilst the colour is important I would suggest that most people set the Brightness and Contrast of their monitors too high.
Go around the department that uses the database and check the levels of both and adjust them lower and see what effect that has.
Too much television has corrupted peoples colour sense (and their subtlety)!
What I mean by that, is that people adjust their monitors as if they were sitting 2 metres away from them, when in fact they sit 30cms away.
HTH
Regards Jim

Thanks James 33 and Wildhare,

Jim, you mentioned that you use borders around controls such as text boxes, and that you have them highlight when a control gets focus and then return to normal when the control loses focus. Is there any way of doing this quickly for a large number of controls, or would I have to create VBA code for each control with something like:

Private Sub ControlName_GotFocus()
Me!ControlName.BorderColor = 10092543
End Sub

Private Sub ControlName_LostFocus()
Me!ControlName.BorderColor = 0
End Sub

Thanks much.

Henry

I do it with a function in a general module:

Function SetBorderColor()
on Error resume next
Screen.ActiveControl.BorderColor = vbRED
End function

Function ResetBorderColor()
on error resume next
Screen.ActiveControl.BorderColor = vbWhite
End Function

Then, after I've designed my form, I select ALL of the text boxes or other controls I want this to happen on, and hit PROPERTIES.

Then I place a call to the SETBORDERCOLOR function in the ON GOTFOCUS event, and a call to RESETBORDERCOLOR in the On Lost Focus event:

GotFocus =SetBorderColor()
LostFocus =ResetBorderWhite()

That's all there is to it. There's a sample db up on the Hare-Net showing this technique:


Good luck
Jim How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand...
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