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@NogDogMay 13.2006 — #The biggest problem I have with modified scrollbars is that many times it seems people who do that tend to make the scrollbars difficult to see. They use colors that do not contrast enough with the surrounding colors, make them thinner, have the scrollbar slider and the scrollbar background be almost the same color, etc., until you don't even realize that they are there.
Users are used to seeing the standard gray scrollbars on their applications. If you're going to start messing with their expectations, then make sure you do it in a way that's obvious rather than hidden. (It's similar to users expecting unvisited links to be underlined, blue text. If you change that to dull gray/brown text with no underline, they're likely to miss the fact that it's a link.) I have no problem with you screwing other people's scrollbars up either. The less usable your site is the more likely that the people will leave your site and visit ours instead.
If you do do it, I would suggest keeping a reasonable amount of contrast in the design, but I'm sure you will anyway! ?
Colors that compliment the web site but not necessarily add anything nor pull the focus of the visitor away from the content.
Most people whom visit a web site do so in an interesting way... their eyes scan two lines horizontally, one line verticall, -forming roughly the letter "F". Making the scrollbars 'too attractive' disrupts this natural 'eye wandering' and the site just failed, for the visitor isn't looking at the site anymore...
For accessibility for colorblindness for instance, any two colors that come into contact with each other should have a value differance of at least 100 or greater. That way you won't have colors like #EF8861 [rgb: (239,58,97)] and #F6B28F [rgb: (246, 88, 151)] next to each other. (Think of tomato soup mixed with an equal part milk versus tomato soup mixed with an equal part water... that is what these two colors' approx. look like).
The 'difference' in their numerical value (rgb) is red=7, green=30 and blue=54, respectively. Therefore, each of these three color values (red, green, blue for "rgb") are WAY too similar, and would essentially be invisible to anyone with visial disability to distinquish color variances. Especially true for the green-blue ranges, where colorblindness is most common.
Colored scrollbars are eye-candy. Treat them as such. If the site is a 'fun site' or a personal site, sure, I am not offended by their use. I built and sold a web site build to a nursery school co-op that had the school's colors in the scrollbars, and the site had a LOT of 'whitespace', so it worked very nicely. The client was pleased. Yes, even with the colored scrollbars, which they were pleasantly surprised and happy with! I got paid, and complimented.
Those whom used the site, well, -I never heard any complaints. -What more can one possibly ask for? ?
-Joel
To tell you the whole story, when I opened the website, I actually forgot all about scrollbars. I'm used to Firefox, so, of course, the scrollbars don't bother me, and I don't even see them. For me, it's like the address bar, it's here anyway.
BUT, I got many critics like this :
-your new design is nice, but you should really color the scrollbar.
-it's great, except for that ugly gray scrollbar which ruins everything. Can't you do anything about that ?
-Ness, you actually forgot to color the scrollbars (<-- that was from someone who knows me well)
So, I decided to make a thread, to see what you think about it.
The scrollbar would not be invisible, because there is no point in making people search for one hour where the hell they can scroll down, but it would rather be integrated in the general design (with the website colors : dark red and beige (which are actually the colors of this forum, I didn't even notice until I wrote this sentence ^^)).
Anyway, don't hesitate to comment ! I'm not offended by critics, so go ahead ! It's great to have your opinion on that very popular question ^^
I don't even think about coloring the scrollbar. It's a non-issue. Like marquee tags. You forgot to color the scrollbar?! What kind of question is that?!! The only people who do that are these weird 'goth' sites and gamers. Great site except for the ugly scrollbar?! Unbelievable. Like they never saw one before? Boobs.
My site is a personal website, it's not the official website for the french Government ^^Like a lot of others I used to colour my scrollbars when I discovered how to, then after other elements of design became more important than the aesthetic, I decided to just leave the recolouring out altogether. It makes sense to want to colour scrollbars within the web page but the ones for the browser window should really be left alone as they aren't part of the page.
I didn't even think of coloring the browser window's scrollbar ^^ No, the only one I wanted to color was the one that [I]inside[/I] the book layout. The pseudo-frame div scrollbar.
I don't care about the other one, my background is gray anyway ^^First off all, nice site... something out of the ordinary but it looks good. As for personal preferences, I really don't like when site creators start messing with elements such as submit buttons, scrollbars, all that stuff. I want mine to look the same on every site.
As for other solutions, I think in this case you might even be able to remove the scrollbar and just scroll automatically depending on the position of the mousecursor over the text on the right page. That way just moving your mouse down will scroll the text down. It might take some JavaScript and some tweaking to make it intuitive enough so it doesnt become annoying, but I think it'd be great if you can pull it off.
-edit- fixed a weird sentence
Honestly, NEVER use javascript to mess around with something as important as the scrolling of a page. NEVER.
Colored scrollbars are 1000 times better than javascript scrollbars, methinks.
I personally think that, if it was allowed to modify the background or the border or the font /color of a submit element, it's because people wanted to modify them. It adds something to the website.
If you want to leave everthing as remains, then... blue links, black headers, default font family and white background are great. Like in the first days of internet ^^
Ah the good old days :rolleyes:
Ok let me ellaborate a little bit. I think when you're surfing the internet there needs to be a sort of common denominator in the way that we navigate across different sites. To me that means, don't touch my scrollbars, window (popups argh, fullscreens argh, flash intros argh), and in that context I think links should be blue, and backgrounds light colored as well.
However, there will always be sites that don't conform to this, some with very good reason (a lot of car manufacturers for example, to them showing off how beautiful their cars are is more important than having a clear and navigable website). If you want to have a site thats also beautiful, it might mean that you have to compromise on blue links and grey buttons because quite frankly they're ugly. Once you make a decision like this I think you should go with it all the way and look at alternative ways of navigating/scrolling through your site. To me, if you're going to change buttons, backgrounds, and link colors, you might as well do the scrollbars, too.
Anyway, scrollbars are annoying (I admit, those artificial javascript/flash ones even more so), and most of the time I find myself using the scrollwheel on the mouse anyway. So really what it comes down to is finding a good alternative for a scrollbar, which is intuitive to use and doesn't annoy people. Unfortunately I don't think anyone has ever really succeeded there before, so look at it as a challenge. ?
Soooo true ^^
Ok, I get your point !!! And you're absolutely right, actually ?
I guess I'll color my scrollbar, then ?
Thanks a lot for the input !Opera actually has an option that allows you to choose whether to allow form field styleing of buttons/scrollbars etc or not.
Oh, really ? I didn't know that !!! Opera is really the best browser around. And nobody seems to know it. I just love this browser ^^ It even allows colored scrollbars ?
Not everyone uses the default theme on Firefox, I would imagine that a lot of people have installed a theme like I have. Aside from that, a lot of people also use XP, the scrollbars on XP are much nicer than the classic grey ones. In XP they're rounded and coloured light blue. It's only the older Windows OS's that have the grey scrollbars, unless people set Windows XP to the classic theme.
If you specify colours for the scrollbars then for users of XP with the nice rounded blue scrollbars, they will suddenly get squared off, rectangular scrollbars. That doesn't look so nice.
[upl-file uuid=ee33c2ec-0111-41a8-b468-16d300b3062e size=94kB]horrible.jpg[/upl-file] Could always setup a cookie set via PHP through user-input via a checkbox to allow users to enable scrollbar colors. What to use for the default? I'm thinking not to color them by default.
OMG, it looks so... blue !!! lol. I have the classic theme. I just hate big blue rounded things. I also have the default FF theme.
Thanks, David, I didn't think of that. What should I do, then ? Not color them ? If I do color them, it will be only the one that's inside the book layout. It will break the blue rounded scrollbars, but will it make them nice and colored, or just plain old squared ? I didn't really get this one.
So, you think I shouldn't color anything ? But it's so ugly, now !!! ?
That's a but complicated for scrollbars... Many people come to my website for the book, not for the scrollbars ^^ And these people are not webdesign experts either... I think they wouldn't care about the scrollbars. I'm just asking if there would be any major drawbacks to coloring or not coloring them. ^^http://enfantsdelo.free.fr/news ), which colors would you use ?Ness -
The link you've provided brings up the following error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /mnt/102/sdb/a/d/enfantsdelo/news/ecrire/tools/spamplemousse/postcon.php on line 31
KDLA
Oups, sorry. My host has HUGE problems this month, they are upgrading their servers and putting the newest MySQL version as well... So... my website is quite random, now ^^
(I even get the following error : 2006 - MySQL server has gone away, which seems quite a hard one, this time... :mad: )
"A friend told me that I should color the scrollbar on my site in yellow (same color as the postit) or in the same color as my title on the book side (this one depends on the section : red, turquoise, blue, green) so as to counterbalance those colors, and to make an harmony. What do you think ? If you had to color the scrollbar (the one inside the book layout :http://enfantsdelo.free.fr/news ), which colors would you use ?"
Of course, those who haven't criticized the colored-scrollbars yet and their evilness can feel free to do so ?I'd keep it the default. A splash of color on the side would distract from the symmetry of the design. Right now, there's a good balance, and my eye stays where it should.
Good Luck -
KDLA Thanks, KDLA !!
Right now, the site is dead again, I'm so lucky with my server that it "exploded", and will be down for at least two days... lol
Contributor: Wyka-Warzecha Enterprises ([email protected] )
Contributor URL:http://www.wyka-warzecha.com/
Details: 1.78 KB * Uploaded August 31 2001
Description: Create a cool textbox scroller (easily adapted to any other form elements) in seconds!" It has a great scroll bar, but I would much prefer a black background in the scroll bar and text that is this color - DEBE8C. Is there anyone that can tell me how to change to those colors? I am trying to recreate a website for a friend whose site was frames and xhtml and I have a limited knowledge of html only.
Thanks!To be honest, you should really start your own thread. But since you're here, I might as well tell you that the only link you give is to a site that says 'down for redesign' so we're none the wiser as to the script you're using... http://javascript.internet.com/text-effects/1-cool-textbox-scroller.html#source
To color, or not to color ?
Hello !
I have a question for all of you.
It’s about colored-scrollbars…
*runs away and hides while people start to cast stones
Ok, I know the general feeling about colored-scrollbars around here. BUT…
Seriously, why is it so bad ? People who use FF won’t see them, and if people use IE, then, there is nothing we can do for them, so let’s just offer them a cool, colored-scrollbar.
I’ve recently remade my website ([url]http://www.lesenfantsdelo.com[url]http://enfantsdelo.free.fr/news[url]http://enfantsdelo.free.fr/lierleo.php)
So, my question is… is it better to stand proud and not color my scrollbar, or to make an attempt at making them less [I]visible
(I’m not starting a debate, I’m merely asking a question ^^)
EDIT : oh, and maybe this would be better in the general subforum, but I think it concerns css directly, as it’s a css 2.0 and css 1.0 validation problem.
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@NogDogMay 13.2006 — #Users are used to seeing the standard gray scrollbars on their applications. If you're going to start messing with their expectations, then make sure you do it in a way that's obvious rather than hidden. (It's similar to users expecting unvisited links to be underlined, blue text. If you change that to dull gray/brown text with no underline, they're likely to miss the fact that it's a link.)
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@felgallMay 13.2006 — #reply?
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@DaveSWMay 13.2006 — #equally though many IE users actually like coloured scrollbars... as I heard one person say "amazing the attention to detail they put into this website - even the scrollbars are coloured"!!!If you do do it, I would suggest keeping a reasonable amount of contrast in the design, but I'm sure you will anyway! ?
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@WebJoelMay 13.2006 — #I lean cautiously towards "it's okay to use colored scrollbars", -but provisionally... They must be attractively-contrasting. Not just 'eye of the beholder'-attractive (we've all seen HORRIBLE color choices on web sites and I mean borders, background, images, etc...)Colors that compliment the web site but not necessarily add anything nor pull the focus of the visitor away from the content.
Most people whom visit a web site do so in an interesting way... their eyes scan two lines horizontally, one line verticall, -forming roughly the letter "F". Making the scrollbars 'too attractive' disrupts this natural 'eye wandering' and the site just failed, for the visitor isn't looking at the site anymore...
For accessibility for colorblindness for instance, any two colors that come into contact with each other should have a value differance of at least 100 or greater. That way you won't have colors like #EF8861 [rgb: (239,58,97)] and #F6B28F [rgb: (246, 88, 151)] next to each other. (Think of tomato soup mixed with an equal part milk versus tomato soup mixed with an equal part water... that is what these two colors' approx. look like).
The 'difference' in their numerical value (rgb) is red=7, green=30 and blue=54, respectively. Therefore, each of these three color values (red, green, blue for "rgb") are WAY too similar, and would essentially be invisible to anyone with visial disability to distinquish color variances. Especially true for the green-blue ranges, where colorblindness is most common.
Colored scrollbars are eye-candy. Treat them as such. If the site is a 'fun site' or a personal site, sure, I am not offended by their use. I built and sold a web site build to a nursery school co-op that had the school's colors in the scrollbars, and the site had a LOT of 'whitespace', so it worked very nicely. The client was pleased. Yes, even with the colored scrollbars, which they were pleasantly surprised and happy with! I got paid, and complimented.
Those whom used the site, well, -I never heard any complaints. -What more can one possibly ask for? ?
-Joel
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 13.2006 — #thanks to everybody for your input !!!To tell you the whole story, when I opened the website, I actually forgot all about scrollbars. I'm used to Firefox, so, of course, the scrollbars don't bother me, and I don't even see them. For me, it's like the address bar, it's here anyway.
BUT, I got many critics like this :
-your new design is nice, but you should really color the scrollbar.
-it's great, except for that ugly gray scrollbar which ruins everything. Can't you do anything about that ?
-Ness, you actually forgot to color the scrollbars (<-- that was from someone who knows me well)
So, I decided to make a thread, to see what you think about it.
The scrollbar would not be invisible, because there is no point in making people search for one hour where the hell they can scroll down, but it would rather be integrated in the general design (with the website colors : dark red and beige (which are actually the colors of this forum, I didn't even notice until I wrote this sentence ^^)).
Anyway, don't hesitate to comment ! I'm not offended by critics, so go ahead ! It's great to have your opinion on that very popular question ^^
reply?
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@drhowarddrfineMay 13.2006 — #I got many critics like this :WTF?
-your new design is nice, but you should really color the scrollbar.
-it's great, except for that ugly gray scrollbar which ruins everything. Can't you do anything about that ?
-Ness, you actually forgot to color the scrollbars (<-- that was from someone who knows me well)[/QUOTE]
I don't even think about coloring the scrollbar. It's a non-issue. Like marquee tags. You forgot to color the scrollbar?! What kind of question is that?!! The only people who do that are these weird 'goth' sites and gamers. Great site except for the ugly scrollbar?! Unbelievable. Like they never saw one before? Boobs.
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 14.2006 — #Some designers actually like to color the scrollbar. I used to color my scrollbars, and my sites were very pretty like that. People liked them a lot. It all depends on what kind of content you offer.My site is a personal website, it's not the official website for the french Government ^^
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@deancruddaceMay 14.2006 — #reply?
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@felgallMay 14.2006 — #reply?
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 14.2006 — #It makes sense to want to colour scrollbars within the web page but the ones for the browser window should really be left alone as they aren't part of the page.[/QUOTE]
I didn't even think of coloring the browser window's scrollbar ^^ No, the only one I wanted to color was the one that [I]inside[/I] the book layout. The pseudo-frame div scrollbar.
I don't care about the other one, my background is gray anyway ^^
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@buzzcodeMay 14.2006 — #As for other solutions, I think in this case you might even be able to remove the scrollbar and just scroll automatically depending on the position of the mousecursor over the text on the right page. That way just moving your mouse down will scroll the text down. It might take some JavaScript and some tweaking to make it intuitive enough so it doesnt become annoying, but I think it'd be great if you can pull it off.
-edit- fixed a weird sentence
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 15.2006 — #First off all, nice site... something out of the ordinary but it looks good. As for personal preferences, I really don't like when site creators start messing with elements such as submit buttons, scrollbars, all that stuff. I want mine to look the same on every site.
As for other solutions, I think in this case you might even be able to remove the scrollbar and just scroll automatically depending on the position of the mousecursor over the text on the right page. That way just moving your mouse down will scroll the text down. It might take some JavaScript and some tweaking to make it intuitive enough so it doesnt become annoying, but I think it'd be great if you can pull it off.
-edit- fixed a weird sentence[/QUOTE]
Honestly, NEVER use javascript to mess around with something as important as the scrolling of a page. NEVER.
Colored scrollbars are 1000 times better than javascript scrollbars, methinks.
I personally think that, if it was allowed to modify the background or the border or the font /color of a submit element, it's because people wanted to modify them. It adds something to the website.
If you want to leave everthing as remains, then... blue links, black headers, default font family and white background are great. Like in the first days of internet ^^
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@buzzcodeMay 15.2006 — #
If you want to leave everthing as remains, then... blue links, black headers, default font family and white background are great. Like in the first days of internet ^^[/QUOTE]
Ah the good old days :rolleyes:
Ok let me ellaborate a little bit. I think when you're surfing the internet there needs to be a sort of common denominator in the way that we navigate across different sites. To me that means, don't touch my scrollbars, window (popups argh, fullscreens argh, flash intros argh), and in that context I think links should be blue, and backgrounds light colored as well.
However, there will always be sites that don't conform to this, some with very good reason (a lot of car manufacturers for example, to them showing off how beautiful their cars are is more important than having a clear and navigable website). If you want to have a site thats also beautiful, it might mean that you have to compromise on blue links and grey buttons because quite frankly they're ugly. Once you make a decision like this I think you should go with it all the way and look at alternative ways of navigating/scrolling through your site. To me, if you're going to change buttons, backgrounds, and link colors, you might as well do the scrollbars, too.
Anyway, scrollbars are annoying (I admit, those artificial javascript/flash ones even more so), and most of the time I find myself using the scrollwheel on the mouse anyway. So really what it comes down to is finding a good alternative for a scrollbar, which is intuitive to use and doesn't annoy people. Unfortunately I don't think anyone has ever really succeeded there before, so look at it as a challenge. ?
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 15.2006 — #If you want to have a site thats also beautiful, it might mean that you have to compromise on blue links and grey buttons because quite frankly they're ugly. [/QUOTE]
Soooo true ^^
Ok, I get your point !!! And you're absolutely right, actually ?
I guess I'll color my scrollbar, then ?
Thanks a lot for the input !
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@felgallMay 15.2006 — #reply?
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 15.2006 — #Opera actually has an option that allows you to choose whether to allow form field styleing of buttons/scrollbars etc or not.[/QUOTE]
Oh, really ? I didn't know that !!! Opera is really the best browser around. And nobody seems to know it. I just love this browser ^^ It even allows colored scrollbars ?
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@David_HarrisonMay 15.2006 — #I've recently remade my website (Oh yes, totally horrible. Check out the attached image.http://www.lesenfantsdelo.com ) in an unusual design, and I must say that the horrible FF scrollbars don't really blend well in my pages[/QUOTE]
Not everyone uses the default theme on Firefox, I would imagine that a lot of people have installed a theme like I have. Aside from that, a lot of people also use XP, the scrollbars on XP are much nicer than the classic grey ones. In XP they're rounded and coloured light blue. It's only the older Windows OS's that have the grey scrollbars, unless people set Windows XP to the classic theme.
If you specify colours for the scrollbars then for users of XP with the nice rounded blue scrollbars, they will suddenly get squared off, rectangular scrollbars. That doesn't look so nice.
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@UltimaterMay 16.2006 — #reply?
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 16.2006 — #
If you specify colours for the scrollbars then for users of XP with the nice rounded blue scrollbars, they will suddenly get squared off, rectangular scrollbars. That doesn't look so nice.[/QUOTE]
OMG, it looks so... blue !!! lol. I have the classic theme. I just hate big blue rounded things. I also have the default FF theme.
Thanks, David, I didn't think of that. What should I do, then ? Not color them ? If I do color them, it will be only the one that's inside the book layout. It will break the blue rounded scrollbars, but will it make them nice and colored, or just plain old squared ? I didn't really get this one.
So, you think I shouldn't color anything ? But it's so ugly, now !!! ?
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 16.2006 — #Could always setup a cookie set via PHP through user-input via a checkbox to allow users to enable scrollbar colors. What to use for the default? I'm thinking not to color them by default.[/QUOTE]
That's a but complicated for scrollbars... Many people come to my website for the book, not for the scrollbars ^^ And these people are not webdesign experts either... I think they wouldn't care about the scrollbars. I'm just asking if there would be any major drawbacks to coloring or not coloring them. ^^
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 17.2006 — #Hey, sorry to dig this one out, but... A friend told me today that I should color the scrollbar on my site in yellow (same color as the postit) or in the same color as my title on the book side (this one depends on the section : red, turquoise, blue, green) so as to counterbalance those colors, and to make an harmony. What do you think ? If you had to color the scrollbar (the one inside the book layout : reply?
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@KDLAMay 17.2006 — #The link you've provided brings up the following error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /mnt/102/sdb/a/d/enfantsdelo/news/ecrire/tools/spamplemousse/postcon.php on line 31
KDLA
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 17.2006 — #Ness -
The link you've provided brings up the following error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /mnt/102/sdb/a/d/enfantsdelo/news/ecrire/tools/spamplemousse/postcon.php on line 31
KDLA[/QUOTE]
Oups, sorry. My host has HUGE problems this month, they are upgrading their servers and putting the newest MySQL version as well... So... my website is quite random, now ^^
(I even get the following error : 2006 - MySQL server has gone away, which seems quite a hard one, this time... :mad: )
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 27.2006 — #Sorry to bring this topic up once more, but... now, my host is working, finally, and I would like your opinion on this question : "A friend told me that I should color the scrollbar on my site in yellow (same color as the postit) or in the same color as my title on the book side (this one depends on the section : red, turquoise, blue, green) so as to counterbalance those colors, and to make an harmony. What do you think ? If you had to color the scrollbar (the one inside the book layout :
Of course, those who haven't criticized the colored-scrollbars yet and their evilness can feel free to do so ?
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@KDLAMay 30.2006 — #Good Luck -
KDLA
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@Ness_du_FratauthorMay 31.2006 — #Right now, the site is dead again, I'm so lucky with my server that it "exploded", and will be down for at least two days... lol
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@sunmaster14Jun 27.2006 — #This is a facinating thread. I suppose everyone went home, but I have a question regarding this. I copied one from the site that refered me to this one: "Title: 1 Cool TextBox ScrollerContributor: Wyka-Warzecha Enterprises (
Contributor URL:
Details: 1.78 KB * Uploaded August 31 2001
Description: Create a cool textbox scroller (easily adapted to any other form elements) in seconds!" It has a great scroll bar, but I would much prefer a black background in the scroll bar and text that is this color - DEBE8C. Is there anyone that can tell me how to change to those colors? I am trying to recreate a website for a friend whose site was frames and xhtml and I have a limited knowledge of html only.
Thanks!
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@DaveSWJun 27.2006 — #reply?
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@sunmaster14Jun 27.2006 — #Thank you so much. It took me quite a while to figure out how to start a thread, but I finally did. This is the actual web address of the script. I didn't know if we could post web addresses or not: reply?