Hi Evelyn,

>Is there anything I can follow as standard or anyone has written an article regarding this.

Well, you will find two groups here with very sound opinions.

One group follows the Windows style guide lines. That means, you leave all colors as the user defined them. Highlighting is done sparsely through font styles (especially bold) or configurable colors. If possible, font sizes and names are read from the configuration. The reason is that there are laws that prohibit the discrimination of disabled people. Since there are many different kind of disabilities like blindness, color-blindness, bad-sight, being unable to type, being unable to hear, etc., it's best to follow the rules in Windows, as those are supported by accessibility tools.

Here are some guidelines:

Windows: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997506.aspx
Windows Vista: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en-us/UxGuide/UXGuide/Home.asp
Accessibility: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/

The other group believes in making the application visual appealing, by choosing fonts, colors, layout, background images, and the like. Frequently this involves UI elements that Microsoft introduces in new versions of Windows and especially in Office. The reasons given for creating your own UI vary. Here's a selection:

- Microsoft is doing the same with every new product version
- Our customer doesn't have disabled users
- The user base is small enough for me to handle such requests on demand
- The user base is too small for average looking software. We need some fresh look to sell products
- The application must look like one created in Visual Studio, because then our VFP application is a .NET application
- Support is impossible when you can't rely on certain UI constellations
- Development of enabled applications iis too expensive
- My boss wants it this way