I have been using Inkscape for a few days. When I first started I could create an object and see the fill color on screen and now they are all white using any flat color. When I switch to gradient I can see color and even change the color. What can I do to be able to see the colors on screen?

Maybe you made them transparent, or the layers they're in?
Layer transparency is set in the Layers dialog (Ctrl+Shift+L).


Object transparency (for both fill and stroke) is set in the Fill & Stroke dialog (Ctrl+Shift+F). You have the "opacity" slider for the object as a whole, and also the "A" slider under the colors, both for Fill color and for Stroke color.

Tutorial covering all the possible reasons for this: http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/inde ... article=18