Neat r2 Feature

So here's another thing that I truly love about r2 -- better accessibility! In previous versions of REALbasic, we ignored things like the user's settings for window and pasteboard colors, text color, etc (which are settable on Windows). But in this version, we now honor that. What's more, we allow you to set these colors if you'd like. And here's why:

Code editor background color:
Studies have shown that contrast is the most important factor in readability. That's why you typically see white backgrounds with black text. However, some studies have also shown that a dark background with light text (also a high contrast situation) reduces eye strain. A lot of times, it comes down to personal preference as to which you prefer. But this is one case where people really should have the ability to modify the colors (and we never used to let you modify the background color) -- eye strain is a very dangerous thing for people who sit in front of a computer screen all day long.

Here's a screenshot of the way I have my IDE setup now:

Pasteboard:
The pasteboard suffers from the same color contrast problems as the code editor. Only it's worse than a code editor due to the fact that the color of the window isn't that much different from the color of the pasteboard. The resulting problem is that some people have a hard time distinguishing the edges of the window due to the lack of contrast. So by letting them pick the pasteboard color, they can easily tell the difference between the window and the pasteboard itself.

In addition to allowing the user to specify these colors, we finally honor the system settings as well. So the colors match whatever you have your system colors set to by default.

It's the little things like these which make a product feel better (at least, that's what I think). When an application is accessible, these changes affect you in subtle ways that you don't really notice. But when an application is not accessible, you notice it very quickly. For instance, imagine that every other editor you use honors the system's background color for the editor window and you have your system set to show olive. Then you open RB and you're presented with white. Pretty easy to tell! But if you open up RB and it just looks like every other app, you don't really notice that (since it's just expected). It's important to keep this in mind when designing your own applications. You may not think much of it, but when a user encounters something very obvious to them, they will not be happy.