> Geoff Deering wrote: > With all due respects this is the way default graphical user interface > on operating systems are designed to function.
> From page 158 of "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design"; But we're talking about the design of web sites, not software that should visually integrate with, and adhere to, the OS defaults. > This also leads to another problem, in that if users configure their > operating system to a custom scheme, unwittingly the web designer may be > indicating to the user that a field may be read only even if it is not > grey. How does the designer know whether to use grey or not? They > don't. All they know is the majority of users probably do not customise > this setting. > This is why I believe that it is best to not style form controls (or at > least minimally) Taking this thought further, they shouldn't style the size, typeface, colour of body text, or any other aspect of the web page either, as it may unwittingly clash with, or go against, user defined settings? Personally, I still think "don't style form controls" is far too sweeping a rule to catch certain edge cases. As you said yourself "or at least minimally"... which is very difficult to quantify, and depends on the specific situation. Oh well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, P ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Web Editor / University of Salford http://www.salford.ac.uk ________________________________ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ ________________________________ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
