Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
Geoff Deering wrote:
I think it is quite simple, don't use any scale of grey at all. Grey
is reserved for meaning *read only*.
With all due respect, that sounds a tad too draconian for my
tastes...and it's exactly the kind of talk that will make web
*designers* simply stop listening to anything we say about standards
and accessibility.
It's a design and usability issue (with obvious accessibility
implications stemming from it) that cannot be boiled down to a simple,
one size fits all rule. It needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
With all due respects this is the way default graphical user interface
on operating systems are designed to function. This is what the user
agent should adhere too, the basic principles that form GUI standard
software design, and it is something that designers should understand
when implementing their design, because if they fail to do so, it most
likely will cause both usability and accessibility issues.
If you set any input control to read-only this is how it will behave,
this is how it communicates to the user; "This field is read only".
That is what it means visually, it is greyed by default.
From page 158 of "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design";
"You can also use text boxes to display read-only text that is not
editable, but still selectable. When setting this option with the
standard control, the system automatically changes the background
color of the field to indicate to the user the difference in behaviour".
Notice it doesn't say greyed, it just says it changes the background
color, because this is under the control of the custom settings of the
users desktop.
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), they can differ dramatically, not only over various
operating systems, but over various versions and implementations of
those operating systems, and the various custom desktop that the
designer has no idea is being superimposed over their design, or visa versa.
If you don't style form control I think it is less taxing cognitively.
I used to style them, but I have abandoned that long ago because I think
users become so used to seeing the standard controls of their operating
system, that on complex pages, it begins to become too difficult to
easily recognise them, IMHO.
--------------
Geoff Deering
I think Bert D
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