>>I agree with you and your approach. If it was such a hard and fast rule that option buttons should be only vertical, one should never change a button's background color, etc, etc. then why does MS give us the option to "break" them. For a long time we VFPers could not change a button's background color while the VB developers could. Suddenly (in VFP8?) we are given a button background color property. Why? I'm not complaining. I'm glad they did it.
>
>Because its OK to break the rules WHEN you know why the rule is there and when its OK to break the rule. In general, you really should adhere to the Windows standard (Oxymoron Alert!)

What you say makes sense to me. What I don't like are those who immediately give the knee jerk reaction to say "you should not change blah, blah, blah" whenever someone asks how to change blah, blah, blah. The way I see it is, users will either like your UI design or let you know that it blows! If the latter should happen, then change it.

I've seen many software products that stray from the "Windows standards". They tend to either take on a web-like look and feel or use, for lack of a better word, glassy looking buttons and icons. Changing the Windows schemes does not affect these UIs, but, I doubt very many users of these products would mind. Those GUIs look good regardless.

Mike