it would be nice that the background of the text area can be changed.

[Danny Jiang]

Is there is a way to change the default white background color in text
input area to something dark like darkgray in OneNote 2007 or all
Office applications?

I think there could save a lot of engry just by using a dark
blackground for all the applications we were used all day long. LOL

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

Do you mean the Page Color setting? (File | Page Setup | Page Color | Body
Color)?

The color choices there are are light in nature (keeping with the paper
metaphor of OneNote - black paper isn't commonly used

Or do you mean the Silver/Blue/Black UI theme choices that the other Office
Applications which have the new Ribbon UI have?

 

[Josh Einstein]

Actually it's a misconception that dark colors use less energy. In fact, on
some LCD's a black pixel can use more energy than a white pixel, but in
either case it's barely any difference.

 

[Danny Jiang]

Thanks for quick response.

Ok, I was looking at the wrong place to change settings.
here is a screenshot of what I got.

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1696/screenshotws2.gif

 

[Danny Jiang]

Actually it's a misconception that dark colors use less energy. In fact, on
some LCD's a black pixel can use more energy than a white pixel, but in
either case it's barely any difference.

hehe, to save engry on dark background that was my wishful thinking
(LOL). Then I did a little digging on google, I find some others also
have same wishful thinking like I do and writing an article about
it.
"Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year" by Mark Ontkush.
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html

Most people would not like to have a high contrast color display like
mine.
But I feel dark gray background was definitely easy on my eye. So I
made few changes to all my applications to adapt same color themes.

here is a link from Scott Hanselman (senior program manager for
developer division @ microsoft). He is taking one step more, making
changes to all the fonts color to make it more appearing to eyes. I
think you might find it interesting.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=8781D481-DD8E-4501-A86D-069686E025E7

one things I think I need to mention is when you change the default
window color(white) in the color themes, web page that are assume you
are using white as windows color will totally breaking out. You will
see many sliced images they use to fill the gaps. but it looks
funny and educational in my opinion.

 

[Danny Jiang]

Here is a screenshot of google in dark gray background on my system:

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/351/googleschx4.gif