I truly believe that color should be disabled in forum posts because it really hinders the usability of the site. For example, links throughout the site are blue, text is dark grey, headings are purple, ... all standard throughout the site. So much effort was put into the font color, for example. (Remember the font size thread where one shade of grey made such a difference?) It really does bother me when members have the freedom to just screw up all of the effort I put in, not to mention money paid to designers who specialize in color theory. I think that my point can be proven in the fact that there are links to three different search engines in this post.

And don't go trying to tell me that the moderators should make sure things like this don't happen and that color is only used when it aids comprehension. Dave Sinkula uses blue font all the time, which is just about the one color I am the most against because it can so easily be confused with a link, especially because links on this site don't have underlines.

> Red used to be synonymous with links, which is why I avoid it.
On CProgramming, maybe. Never here, or any other site I know of other than CProgramming. Blue is standard for links.

> I once tried to follow the old line of blue=add, red=delete, green=change. This predates forums by a long shot.
My point exactly: that color scheme was never designed with forums in mind, and clearly isn't optimal for forums when links are blue.

> Color is the single most useful way that one can actually highlight things in text.
I disagree. I can use bold or the [highlight] bbcode just fine, as I did here. And doing so will ensure that it will always be design-safe and usability-safe while still standing out just as much.

I also just want to throw in that I'm just opening this idea up to discussion and have no plans of going any further until everyone has voiced an opinion. As you know, one of the toughest parts of trying to run a forum is trying to please everyone. It was just last week when ~sos~ commented that DaniWeb "should strive to become like Google Groups where simplicity is of paramount". It's been my experience that there are just as many people who want color as who don't, so I want to really get a raise of hands without rehashing old arguments. My first post of this thread pretty much summed up my reasons for being against color, so now I just want to get a count of who agrees and who disagrees. Hmm ... guess I should add a poll to this thread, eh?

And I used the [highlight] bbcode to generate it. I have nothing against using the [highlight] bbcode.

I am well aware of that.

Tell me, if you search for a term, how is it rendered?

What distinguishes the search term from a highlight?

Or ought we not search?

My $.02