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Windows Phone Theme colors

Marco Franssen

Marco Franssen /

5 min read1002 words

Cover Image for Windows Phone Theme colors

When developing Windows Phone apps I love to use the theme accent colors in my apps. Since there are some new theme colors in Windows Phone 8 I started searching for their color codes. Lucky me I found them on msdn "Theme for Windows Phone").

Now you may be thinking how to use the colors in your own Windows Phone apps. The Color object doesn't contain a color called Emerald. So I created a small class to help me out with this issue. First of all I created a small static helper method to convert the hexa colors to a color object. So we are able to put in the hexa color string and the function returns a color for us.

public static Color FromHexa(string hexaColor)
{
    return Color.FromArgb(
        Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(1, 2), 16),
        Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(3, 2), 16),
        Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(5, 2), 16),
        Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(7, 2), 16)
    );
}

Then I made some properties that caches the colors for us on their first use. The Color properties looks like this.

private static Color _lime;
public static Color Lime
{
    get
    {
        if (_lime == null)
            _lime = FromHexa("#FFA4CC00");
        return _lime;
    }
}

So this is the complete class I came up with.

PhoneThemeColors.cs
//Copyright (c) 2012 Marco Franssen
//Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
//to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
//and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
//The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
//THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
//FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM,
//DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE
//OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
using System;
using System.Windows.Media;
 
namespace MarcoFranssen.Phone.Core
{
    public static class PhoneThemeColors
    {
        private static Color _lime;
        public static Color Lime
        {
            get
            {
                if (_lime == null)
                    _lime = FromHexa("#FFA4CC00");
                return _lime;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _green;
        public static Color Green
        {
            get
            {
                if (_green == null)
                    _green = FromHexa("#FF60A917");
                return _green;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _emerald;
        public static Color Emerald
        {
            get
            {
                if (_emerald == null)
                    _emerald = FromHexa("#FF008A00");
                return _emerald;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _teal;
        public static Color Teal
        {
            get
            {
                if (_teal == null)
                    _teal = FromHexa("#FF00ABA9");
                return _teal;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _cyan;
        public static Color Cyan
        {
            get
            {
                if (_cyan == null)
                    _cyan = FromHexa("#FF1BA1E2");
                return _cyan;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _cobalt;
        public static Color Cobalt
        {
            get
            {
                if (_cobalt == null)
                    _cobalt = FromHexa("#FF0050EF");
                return _cobalt;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _indigo;
        public static Color Indigo
        {
            get
            {
                if (_indigo == null)
                    _indigo = FromHexa("#FF6A00FF");
                return _indigo;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _violet;
        public static Color Violet
        {
            get
            {
                if (_violet == null)
                    _violet = FromHexa("#FFAA00FF");
                return _violet;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _pink;
        public static Color Pink
        {
            get
            {
                if (_pink == null)
                    _pink = FromHexa("#FFF47D02");
                return _pink;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _magenta;
        public static Color Magenta
        {
            get
            {
                if (_magenta == null)
                    _magenta = FromHexa("#FFD80073");
                return _magenta;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _crimson;
        public static Color Crimson
        {
            get
            {
                if (_crimson == null)
                    _crimson = FromHexa("#FFA20025");
                return _crimson;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _red;
        public static Color Red
        {
            get
            {
                if (_red == null)
                    _red = FromHexa("#FFE51400");
                return _red;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _orange;
        public static Color Orange
        {
            get
            {
                if (_orange == null)
                    _orange = FromHexa("#FFFA6800");
                return _orange;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _amber;
        public static Color Amber
        {
            get
            {
                if (_amber == null)
                    _amber = FromHexa("#FFF0A30A");
                return _amber;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _yellow;
        public static Color Yellow
        {
            get
            {
                if (_yellow == null)
                    _yellow = FromHexa("#FFD8C100");
                return _yellow;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _brown;
        public static Color Brown
        {
            get
            {
                if (_brown == null)
                    _brown = FromHexa("#FF825A2C");
                return _brown;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _olive;
        public static Color Olive
        {
            get
            {
                if (_olive == null)
                    _olive = FromHexa("#FF6D8764");
                return _olive;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _steel;
        public static Color Steel
        {
            get
            {
                if (_steel == null)
                    _steel = FromHexa("#FF647687");
                return _steel;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _mauve;
        public static Color Mauve
        {
            get
            {
                if (_mauve == null)
                    _mauve = FromHexa("#FF76608A");
                return _mauve;
            }
        }
 
        private static Color _sienna;
        public static Color Sienna
        {
            get
            {
                if (_sienna == null)
                    _sienna = FromHexa("#FF7A3B3F");
                return _sienna;
            }
        }
 
        public static Color FromHexa(string hexaColor)
        {
            return Color.FromArgb(
                Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(1, 2), 16),
                Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(3, 2), 16),
                Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(5, 2), 16),
                Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(7, 2), 16)
            );
        }
    }
}

When you want to use it in a MVVM solution you probably want to create a SolidColorBrush to bind your control to. You could use my class like this to make a bindable property for your ViewModel.

public class MyViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    private SolidColorBrush _myTextColor = new SolidColorBrush(PhoneThemeColors.Crimson);
    public SolidColorBrush MyTextColor
    {
        get { return _myTextColor; }
        set
        {
            if (_myTextColor != value)
            {
                _myTextColor = value;
                OnPropertyChanged("MyTextColor");
            }
        }
    }
 
    #region INotifyPropertyChanged Members
 
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
 
    private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
    {
        var handler = PropertyChanged;
        if (handler == null) return;
        handler(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
    }
 
    #endregion
}

I hope you found this article useful. Please fork my gist on Github or past the file in your own project and share it with your friends.

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