Firefox Colour Schemes

Changing the colour scheme of text involves changing text colour (foreground) and/or the page colour (background). This can help many computer users by reducing glare and therefore reducing eye fatigue and headaches. It can also help people who are sensitive to certain colours or can not easily read text in a black on white format such as is found by many people with scotopic sensitivity syndrome or dyslexia.

Before you start you need to have set your own preferred colour scheme for Windows. You can do this using a free program such as Screen Tinter Lite or by delving into the Windows Control Panel. These changes appear automatically in Microsoft Word and in Windows dialogs, but not the web pages shown in Firefox (or Internet Explorer).

Examples

This what we are working towards. Here is the same page from my site shown using three different colour schemes:

Example One

Black on white - this is the default setting for the website. It is perfectly readable for many people but the white generates a lot of glare.

 

Example Two

Dark Red on Light Red - a shift towards the red results in far less glare and can help people with visual disorders such as Scotopic Sensitivity.

Example Three

Yellow on Black - suitable for people with more severe visual difficulties.

Enabling your Colour Scheme

It's really easy to enable your colour scheme in Firefox. You must have already used the Windows Control Panel or Screen Tinter Lite to establish your own custom colours before continuing.

Select Options... from the Tools menu.

ALT + T, O

Select the Content icon in the dialog that appears.

[Arrow Keys]

Click on the Colors... button which you'll find in the Fonts & Colors section of this page.

ALT + C

Untick the box labeled "Allow pages to choose their own colors..."

 

ALT +A

By default Firefox will use the colors specified in the Text and Background colour boxes. If you want to use the same colour scheme that you have defined for Word and the rest of Windows then you will need to tick the box labeled "Use system colors".

ALT +S

Close the two open dialogs by clicking OK on both of them. Your page will not change colours instantly - you will need to reload it by pressing the refresh button or F5.

ENTER, ENTER, F5

As well as selecting alternative colours you may want to explore your browser's page magnification options.