labview soft ware colour shade

[pravin]

hi all,

is their any way to know best color combination of your devloped software

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

hi all,

is their any way to know best color combination of your devloped software

Based on what criteria?

I guess one of the LabVIEW style guides would be a good read for you. There are also books like LabVIEW GUI: Essential Techniques from David Bitter and many more on Amazon or your favorite bookstore.

Many posts on the NI site can be found too, like http://zone.ni.com/d.../tut/p/id/5319.

A google search with "LabVIEW (G)UI Design" will likely give you more hits than you can comprehend and most importantly while there are good basic rules, what is a pleasant UI is also to some degree a matter of taste and we all know that taste is something that can not always be argued about.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[jcarmody]

hi all,

is their any way to know best color combination of your devloped software

There are very bad consequences to a poor UI design.

[ESST]

Hi,

Have alook at Color wheels, there is quite a few on the net.

[Cat]

One of my cow-orkers handed me that cartoon. No respect...

Keep in mind your users, not necessary just what *you* think looks good. I had a project where I was asked to apply color accessibility standards when designing the GUI. Turns out a relatively large percentage of the users were color-blind. "Best" for them was quite different from other users.

[Eugen Graf]

You may easy look on examples of user interfaces:

http://lavag.org/index.php?app=gallery&module=cats&do=sc&cat=4

http://labviewportal.eu/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=1224

I personaly prefer OS colors

[unicorn]

hi all,

is their any way to know best color combination of your devloped software

Here some of my thoughts and findings to color:

You should avoid pale colors on pale color -> no contrast

also dark colors on black background gives almost no contrast.

Red and green cannot distinguished by red-green color blind people as already said but there are also other forms of colorblindness.

The user gets very easily confused if you use too many colors. And acceptable number of colors is low. I haven't got reference by hand but I think it is about three! So less color is better.

To indicate differnt things it is better done with differnt icons than with color. One can differentiate more icons than colors. But don't forget that most icons are not self explaining.

If you need to distinguish of combine different things/controls/indicators on the front panel it is better done by borders or by aligning in columns and or rows than with color.

The basic/main color could be that of a cooperate design.

There is some common meaning of certain colors. Red with white colored text is danger. Orange is warning. Yellow is caution. Green is all right. using them in a different meaning on indicator will be confusing and missleading.

Using color in subVI Icons is up to your taste as long as you are working on your own. If you are working in a team you should talk about it.

But if you use a basic color for a group of VIs they are easily found in the block diagram.

Regards

[PaulG.]

Maybe your eye is better than mine but I don't waste any time figuring out color combinations for my GUI's. However, I've been complimented on my front panels. I use system buttons, one color, font and bold style for button labels and a custom background image. If I have graphs I make them transparent. If I have a lot of info to display to the operator I'll use a list box or a tree control as an indicator. If you follow these guidlines you can have a nice looking FP while avoiding the "LabVIEW Look".

[crelf]

Someone created a VI a few years ago that helped you choose color matches (complimentary, contrasting, etc), but I don't remember who it was...