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Stack Overflow provides good tools in Question editor like "Links", and "Styling."

Another thing that for me would be nice is a color selector. Although an HTML editor is available, a direct click on tool would be good, and users can select different colors, as for marking errors in their program with red, and more important data with blue.

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Let's make the post stand out. *italicizes everything*. No, more. *bolds everything*. Yeah, but can't we just have the important parts, and the other parts be a little more prominent? *<h1>'d everything*. Could you make it look pretty? *Comic Sans + rainbows*. We need to stop it somewhere. –  bjb568 Apr 19 at 18:36

4 Answers 4

up vote 11 down vote accepted

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No, seriously. Having colors would enable people to abuse them. Of course, we also have a possibility for people to abuse headlines or subscripts, but colors can be very distracting if not used correctly.

In order to highlight stuff, we already have boldface and emphasized text. If you can't make clear what the error is, for example, you probably need to rewrite a bit.

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I don't know. Some bad posters will bold everything, but that doesn't happen very often. It's not like people act like SO is myspace. –  MPelletier Dec 9 '11 at 13:37
But it is essentially useless. There I agree. –  MPelletier Dec 9 '11 at 13:38

I don't see any value such a feature would give except for adding complexity and the potential for rather horrific looking questions.

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yes may be you are more closer to the fact that didnt crossed my mind that giving color option to the user would also increase the possibility of Colorful and eye teasing question. But another thing is that just by setting standard colors like Red on for marking or highlighting Error. –  Sam M Dec 9 '11 at 13:28
@user993348: People already have trouble formatting posts the way things are now; adding this feature is, honestly IMO, going to do much, much more harm than good, to put it lightly. –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Dec 9 '11 at 13:29
@user993348 - There are perfectly good standards for those already. –  Oded Dec 9 '11 at 13:30

as for marking errors in their program with red

In that case, it would not be possible to write code that is formatted as code, and contemporary mark a line with a specific color.
Apart that use case, I don't think there are use cases where the use of colors make the post more clearer than it would be without using colors. What is more important in a post is its content, not the color used for the text, or the background.

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This is excellent and should be promoted much more! Highlighting one char / word in code is totally useful, but also extremely rarely seen. Seems like nobody knows about this feature. –  Sliq Oct 2 at 14:18

I would like to give an example of a question where colours are used.

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I think if used cautiously, colours can help to underline the content of a text very effectively. Of course, the opposite can happen as well; but to me the risk should not be too big.

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Much agreed. Sad that we can't appeal this? –  dresserse Nov 4 '13 at 6:53
Nope, nope. Colors do not add any value here. You can as well use Pro: and Contra:. If you saturate your text with bolded and emphasized text, then you would need colors too. But in that case, you should probably reformat your text anyway, instead of adding more formatting. –  Olli Feb 19 at 14:08

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