A really cool inverted color mode in Windows

I was testing some of the accessible features in OneNote and had to use the Magnifying tool in Windows. Because I was in this tool, I needed to explore all the options it has to ensure OneNote works well.

So if you go to the Control Panel | Ease of Access center, you can turn the Magnifier on. Once it is on, you can click the gear icon to control options:

I turned on color inversion and set the zoom level to 50% (it defaults to 100% which doubles screen size) so my screen would appear the right size for me. Once I did that, I got a nice dark theme sort of like one of the black high contrast settings, but the inverted colors are just fun. For instance, Outlook now looks "Halloweeny":

The black and orange reminds me of the holiday we just celebrated.  Pretty slick I think. I may run like this for a week or two since I like the colors. My wallpaper looks really odd, though…

Anyway, sometimes when you test you get to do exploratory testing and while this is not a great example of that, at least I get to explore a feature in Windows I did not know existed.

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2014
  You can use the Onetastic addin to change page color to black, and change the desktop theme to one of the darker colors.  Does this help?

• Anonymous
  January 28, 2014
  Unfortunately, the inability to invert the rest of the interface means that the Blackboard setting looks chaotic and distracting rather than soothing.  Thanks for the suggestion, though.

• Anonymous
  January 28, 2014
  It reminds me of pumpkins at Halloween.