>When did grey forms become vogue? Sometime after Win95 if I remember correctly. YOu know they make lousy illustrations in books if the printer doesnt lighten them up right. And since black on white has been known to be the easiest to read, it makes me wonder and I wonder if anyone else wondered. heh

Gray is not in vogue any longer, nor is it precisely out of vogue - each user should determine their own scheme - a few like gray, but most don't, at least at my agency. It has been shown in studies to cause drowsiness and tedium for many users. And, it was not always optimal for people with vision disabilities. Here is a brief history of the rise and fall of gray schemes:

When 3.1 came out, many developers began "going to party town" with colors in applications, resulting often in loud, gaudy colors (I plead guitly to doing this a little at first :) This caused a sort of standards backlash for puritan-like color guidelines of enforced gray schemes. Our agency went through this whole transition.

In the past two years or so, strict gray schemes have gone "out of fashion," and standards are currently that whenever possible, all applications should use the User's Windows color settings. MS has this posted guideline, in fact, as do we at our agency.

You're point about printing is quite right - I switch to white background for printing illustrations.