Question

The default pages (e.g. TWiki/ManagingWebs )suggest that out of the box, the web background colour should appear as an indicator of what's where. However, the only place the colours actually appear are the Main/WebHome page and the TWiki/AdminTools page, both times in the site-map chart. The colours don't appear anywhere else. What do I need to do to make the backgrounds work, and perhaps that could be set as default if the pages are written like it is?

CORRECTION: It does appear behind the web name at the top of the left sidebar. However, the text elsewhere seems to imply that it should be the main page background?

Environment

-- BrianBobowski - 15 Jun 2005

Answer

The TWiki background colour applies to the sidebar as you have described, the sitemap table, and behind the headings when you execute a search, use the webchanges function (and stats too I think). It doesn't apply to the actual pages within a web. To change the page bgcolor in the HTML typical use of this variable it might be best to consider creatiing a customised CSS spec for the webs you want to apply this variable to. Check out http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/PatternSkin for more info.

-- SueLocke - 26 Jun 2005

BE CAREFUL

It's very easy to come up with some colour combination that is glaringly unpleasant, or even unreadable. Having the plain white or near white background allows a lot of flexibility in decoration. See, for example, ArthurClemens excellent description of the palette for the default Pattern skin at PatternSkinPalette and the pallete and excellent links at StandardColors.

Most certainly applying the the web backgroud colour to the 'whitebaord' will be a disaster! Don't go there!

-- AntonAylward - 26 Jun 2005

And haven't we seen some of those disasters! I was attemting to read such a website a few days ago and had to give up before my eyeballs fried. Nevertheless the web would be a dull place without colour and some experimentation. And with readibility of text against background as a high priority there are lots of sites that html people have access to that test such readibility. Here's a nice one that also sets out the w3C guidelines on readibility. I've got a few implementations of TWiki and yes one of those implementations uses colour on the whiteboard. It passes the readibility test and looks good too even if I say so myself. Vive la difference.

http://juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.php

-- SueLocke - 27 Jun 2005