DHTML Lab: Accessing the User-Defined System Colors, Part I - dhtmlab.com

Accessing the User-Defined System Colors, Part I
IE4Win32

This column is part of the DHTML Lab thread: Creating a Web Application

This tutorial can be appreciated by users of any browser, any version.
In-page examples will work only in IE4 for Windows 95, 98 and NT.

A major consideration in the creation of a Web application is the use of color. All regular OS applications, including the browser you are using to read this page, use a color scheme selected by you, the user, to paint their chrome, buttons, backgrounds and text. Web pages, on the other hand, use colors agreeable to the page author.

In the Windows environment, we set our default colors when we specify our "Desktop Scheme," and all our applications conform to this scheme, even if we change it while an application is running. As the Web becomes more and more a medium for "applications," as well as "pages," the ability for authors to identify the user's preferred color scheme, and use it properly, takes a major position in Web authoring.

In this column, we will discuss the user-defined colors set by Windows users, and how Internet Explorer identifies them. We will examine each color in our usual DHTML Lab exhaustive fashion, then create a few prototype examples of possible uses.

Netscape Navigator identifies the user-defined colors in a completely different way. We will discuss it in an upcoming article, once we have familiarized ourselves with the concepts involved and Explorer's simpler method.

In This Column

We will discuss:

• the user-defined colors available to Explorer
• the correct use of the colors in a DHTML Web application

Produced by Peter Belesis and

All Rights Reserved. Legal Notices.
Created: Feb 23, 1999
Revised: Feb 23, 1999

URL: https://www.webreference.com/dhtml/column24/