Color-coding should never be the only means of conveying information or indicating an action and should not be hard-coded. If fields need to be color-coded, either allow the user to turn the feature off or allow them to select from a range of colors.

Automatic color

Oracle Forms provides a special color named automatic, which is essentially a do-the-right-thing attribute. For example, when applied to the text and background colors of a Text Item, the text will be black and the background color will be white, when running with the Oracle Look and Feel. That same item, running in the Generic Look and Feel, may have different colors depending on how the system colors are currently set up. This flexibility allows each user to control colors so they can account for visual impairments they may have.

Note that the Oracle Forms Layout Editor does not fully recognize the automatic color; it may render items with unexpected colors at design time. Only the runtime Java engine is able to completely interpret and apply this color.

Oracle E-Business Suite features

Oracle E-Business Suite follows all of the guidelines mentioned in this chapter, but has additional requirements and features. These arise from the need to translate to multiple languages, and additional accessibility support built into the Oracle Application Object Library (FND) product. If you are coding extensions to Oracle E-Business Suite, it is recommended to follow these rules in addition to the prior material. See:

Controlling Window, Block, and Region Behavior