[Adium-devl] Adium patch suggestion - setting font color for incoming messages

[Josh Dubois]

Thanks for forwarding my post, Colin.  I added an image of what I've 
done so far to ticket #6349

(http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/6349)

If I understand Adium's functionality correctly (which I may not), then 
there are two things to think about when dealing with colors: the color 
in which a message is display on a user's screen, and the color 
associated with the message when the message is sent over the wire.  I 
would like to give the user independent control over these things.

As far as I can tell, if an incoming message does not have a color 
specified "on the wire," then a user can't change the message color as 
displayed on his or her screen.  I would like to give users the ability 
to control the color of how a message is displayed on their screens, 
regardless of whether the message has a color on the wire.

Also, I prefer having the ability to change colors happen in the UI via 
a color picker, rather than in style sheets.  This is because I suspect 
that some users will not be sophisticated enough to modify or create the 
css style sheets that the webkit uses, but may want to change the colors 
on their screen. 

I like having the preferences pane be the place to change colors because 
adding a background image or a custom background color can make it 
impossible to read messages if the messages are not displayed in a color 
which contrasts with the background (e.g., setting the background to 
blue is OK if the messages display in yellow, but not so good if the 
messages also display in blue).  By allowing a user to interact with a 
color picker from the preferences pane, the user can see the impact of 
his or her color scheme choices right away, without waiting to open up a 
chat window. 

Does anyone have any thoughts about whether this is a good or bad idea?

-- 
Josh DuBois - 612-227-9435
P.O. Box 11007, Minneapolis, MN 55411