Honest Ron's Web Page Colour Thingy



	*Honest Ron's Web Page Colour Thingy* Welcome, dear reader. For your perusal, here are the contents of this document: Introduction Using the Thingy Latest version Known problems Notes and information (includes wish-list and development) License Screen shot Download it! About the author And finally... Introduction Honest Ron's Web Page Colour Thingy is designed to try and ease the problem of choosing colours for the `<BODY ...>` element of Web pages. By using the Thingy you don't have to worry about those nasty hexadecimal numbers, and can mix the colours you like simply by playing around with the slidey bars. Marvellous, huh? Once you are happy with the colours, and the way they mix with each other, you can either copy the `<BODY ...>` element to the clipboard, ready to paste into a Web page, or you can ask the Thingy to create a file and open it in Windows Notepad. [contents] Using the Thingy Using the Thingy is simplicity itself. use the radio buttons to select which element of the text you want to set the colour for. There are five options: `BGCOLOR` - the background colour of a page. You should aim to ensure that your text is readable against this background! `TEXT` - the colour of normal text `LINK` - the colour of a link which hasn't been visited `ALINK` - the colour of a link which has got the mouse button pressed over it (I think newer versions of MS Internet Explorer draws a "focus rectangle" - a dotted box - around selected links rather than changing their colour) `VLINK` - the colour of a link which has been visited use the scroll bars to mix your colour. The display updates dynamically, so you can see the effect of your changes in real time. you can type hexadecimal values directly into the edit boxes below the scroll bars. Remember that you can only use the digits 0...9 and the letters A...F. Invalid hexadecimal numbers will be ignored. Mind you, if you are happy using hexadecimal numbers, you don't really need this program to help you mix them, do you...? alternatively, use the Choose button to call up the standard Windows Choose Color dialog. press the Copy to clipboard button to copy the `<BODY ...>` element to the clipboard. or you can use the Copy button to just copy the current colour's format to the clipboard if, for example, you want to paste it into a `<FONT ...>` tag. press the Create file button to create a new .htm file and open it in Notepad. press the Exit* button to close the Thingy. Thingy will remember the colour settings for next time if the Save settings on exit box is checked. There are a few other things which Thingy can do now: one-click selection from the 16 standard colours from the basic Windows palette. one-click selection from up to 16 custom colours. To set these up you should use the Choose button and then add to the custom colours in that dialog box. [contents] Latest version The latest version of Thingy is v1.10. This is a fairly significant change from the previously released version 1.03. Version 1.10 of Thingy features a redesigned interface dialog, and allows up to 16 custom colours to be set. These will be remembered between sessions, so you can use them to hold colours that you regularly use. [contents] Known Problems These are known problems with the program. not a problem as such... but the "Select background image" is disabled because I don't yet know how to read in a GIF image file. Version 1.10 As I write this, there are no known problems with the program. Version 1.03 As I write this, there are no known problems with the program. Version 1.02 This version fixes all the problems listed below (i.e. those in v1.01). Version 1.01 the System \| Close menu item does not work Under Windows 95, the dialog box does not minimse to a taskbar item, but minimises to the desktop. [contents] Notes and information Colour considerations You should be aware that what you see on your screen may not be exactly what a person browsing your Web page will see. There are all sort of factors affecting the way a browser renders pages, but perhaps the most problematic for the purposes of this document is that of display colour depth. By this I mean the number of colours which a display, and so a browser, can display. Some browsers are able to use logical colour palettes, enabling them to set the displayable colours to suit themselves. Other brwosers, however, must resort to displaying the nearest match from a colour palette, or dithering backgrounds. This can lead to unexpected results -- e.g. text may become invisible against the background if there is not enough contrast. Bear this in mind when you create your masterpiece! The Thingy itself does some basic palette-setting, so you should only really notice dithering if you are using a very small palette, such as a 16-colour display. Reporting bugs If you should happen to find anything which the Thingy is doing wrong, then you may notify me by email to `[email protected]`. If wishes were horses... Got a suggestion or a wish-list? Well, tell me about it by sending email to `[email protected]`. I don't promise that you'll ever hear anything more about it, but nothing ventured... Future development Hereafter follows a list of user-requests and my own ideas which may, or may not, be implemented over time. Please refer back to this page for up-to-date information as to versions. And remember - the more people request a particular feature, the greater the chance I'll be moved to provide it. Current none (well, none that I'll let the opposition know about ;) ) Previous implemented requests (Hexadecimal value entry is implemented as of v1.02) allow direct-entry of RGB values in decimal or hexadecimal form in edit boxes below the scroll bars. (this is really against the rationale of the program -- that being that the person who is using it doesn't know what the hex or decimal values should be. This is exactly why the colours are mixed visually...) (Implemented as of v1.02) underline the link examples to make them look more like the links in Netscape/MSIE. (Implemented as of v1.03) add option to create a single `<FONT COLOR="#...">` tag for those who wish to write for browsers supporting this tag. Remember, in the meantime, that you can cut and paste selections from the edit box which contains the auto-generated `<BODY...>` tag. So, you can compose the hexadecimal values for, say, plain text then cut and paste the relevant text into the `<FONT COLOR="#...">` tag. If contacting me about this program, please be sure to mention it somewhere in the email, so I have an idea what you are talking about! [contents] License Honest Ron's Web Page Colour Thingy is, to all intents and purposes, free software. You can use it and redistribute it for no fee to your heart's content. Well, OK, you may charge reasonable expenses (i.e. the cost of a diskette and postage) if you want to distribute it through traditional shareware channels. You are also free to include it on coverdisks and CD-ROM, and distribute it via any electronic means. But you must only distribute the original `webcolor.zip` or `webc110.zip` file, complete and intact. It's highly unlikely to do anything nasty to files on your machine, but if it does, it's your fault, not mine. Oh, yes, I said "...to all intents and purpose, free...". Well, I'd greatly appreciate an email from anyone who uses it, so I can get an idea of whether anyone is using it, and whether I should bother maintaining it! So, that might cost you the price of a 'phone call. That's more or less it, but if you're really of a mind to, it'd be great if you'd send me a picture postcard. Yes, I have no friends and need the mail! ;) Oh, the address; `Honest Ron's Dreamarama, 1 Equitable House, Bulk Street, Lancaster, LA1 1GX, England, UK`. [contents] Screen shot Version 1.10 Version 1.03 [contents] Download it! Please rush me my portable walrus-polishing kit! webc110.zip - Version 1.10 - 41,212 bytes webcolor.zip - Version 1.03 - 38,972 bytes Installation is simplicity itself. Simply unzip this archive. If you should wish to rid your hard drive of the Thingy, simply delete `webcolor.` in whichever directory you unzipped it, and also delete `webcolor.ini` from your `\windows\` directory. [contents] About the author Honest Ron is the name under which I distribute my software. Why? Well, that's a story for another time. I am Friday -- not my real name, but good enough for the likes of you. ;) If you'd like to find out more about me, you are very welcome to visit my Web pages. [contents] And finally... ...yes, I did choose the colours for this page using the Thingy! If you don't like them, well they say more about my lack of design skills or my colour blindness than anything else! [contents] See also:* Honest Ron's Top tHat! Honest Ron's Switcheroo


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