A client calls with a problem on a website I helped him with. Seems the color of the background keeps changing. (What???) So I call up his site, Nope, looks right to me. Reload it several times, just in case it's a server issue of some kind-unlikely, but you never know. Flip through a bunch of different documents. Nope, all the same.

"How did you make the color change? What were you doing at the time?"

"Move your head from side to side-the color shifts."

"Are you using an LCD monitor?"

"I don't know."

"Push it lighlty with your fingertip-does it sorta change color right there?"

"Um, yeah."

So I take a moment to explain that off-axis color shifts are common to most all flat-screen monitors. Other folks using other monitors will not experience the same thing.

"Oh. Is there some way you could fix that?"

"Nope, it's in the monitor."

Pause

"Is there a color that wouldn't happen to?"

Dale Austin, June 1, 2004