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Purpose of the Fonts and Colours Laboratory
How to start up the Fonts and Colours Laboratory Overview of how to use the Fonts and Colours Laboratory How to change the appearance of one of the samples How to check the effects on users with poor colour vision What to do when you've found some combinations which work well |
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email us
if you have any comments or queries about the Fonts and Colours Laboratory
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The Fonts and Colours Lab lets you compare up to 4 combinations of:
so that you can see what is most likely to work on your own web site. This is particularly useful if you want to use a multi-part colour scheme for your site, for example one combination for content and another for navigation (links, menus, etc.).
The Fonts and Colours Lab also has options to enable you to see how the colour schemes work for users with various types of colour-vision deficiency - about 8% of males and 0.5% of females have some kind of colour-vision deficiency.
You may have this page open but not the Fonts and Colours Laboratory, for example if you found this page via a search engine or some emailed the URL to you.
If so, we suggest you open the Fonts and Colours Laboratory in a new window.
Select one of the 4 samples and change its appearance.
Do the same for the other 3 samples if you wish to compare different schemes.
If you wish to check how easily your schemes can be read by people with various
types of colour vision deficiency, apply one of the colour vision filter options, than another, etc.
These filters affect all the samples, but not the control panel.
If you then go back to change the appearance of one of your samples, the page will automatically re-display all the samples in "normal" mode.
The right half contains 4 samples. You can change the appearance of any of these by using the page's control panel.
The left side contains a control panel which you use to change the appearance of one of the samples.
First select the sample whose appearance you want to change. You can do this in either of 2 ways:
Either way, the control panel will update itself to reflect the current appearance settings of the sample you have chosen.
If you want to change the font, select a new font from the list beside "Font" on the control panel.
If you want to change the size of the text, select a new size from the list beside "Size" on the control panel.
If you want to change the colour of the text:
If you want to change the colour of the background:
Specify whether you want the text be bold and whether you want it to be italic.
Finally, click the "Show result" button.
If you had previously chosen a colour-vision filter, clicking
"Show result" will automatically re-display all the samples in
"normal" mode.
It's a good idea to check the effects of your colour schemes on users with all types of colour-vision deficiency:
When you've found some combinations you like:
Strictly speaking the colour-vision filters don't show how colour-blind users see different colour-schemes - one can't look inside someone else's mind. What they show is how well users with different kinds of colour-blindness can distinguish different colours and which combinations of text and background colours they can read.
Check whether each sample that you like shows all the properties of its appearance - Font, Size, Bold, Italic, Text colour, Background.
If all the properties of your favourite samples are visible, just print one copy of the page.
If some properties are not visible (usually because you've chosen a large size for the text), for each sample you want to keep:
Christine Ridgen's pages contain:
Copyright 2001 Philip Chalmers