New application themes are now available for download from Microsoft for developers leveraging the latest iteration of Silverlight. A total of three new Silverlight 4 Application Themes went live on the Microsoft Download Center earlier this week, namely the Accent Color, Windows 7 and Cosmopolitan themes. As it was the case with previous releases of application themes for Silverlight, the latest releases can be grabbed free of charge. Developers will be able to take advantage of the new themes in concert with the navigation template that is included in the Silverlight 4 Tools installer. At the same time, devs can turn to a number of resource dictionaries that are provided alongside the themes.
“We are making available the final version of the 3 new application themes we developed. These include the Accent Color, Windows 7 and Cosmopolitan themes. The download contains Visual Studio 2010 template installers, Blend 4 compatible templates as well as the raw resource dictionary assets and sample projects. Final versions for the RIA Services business application template will be coming as we identified some last minute changes we need to make. You can, of course, use the raw assets and tweak them into your existing applications as needed,” Tim Heuer, program manager for Microsoft Silverlight, revealed.
Developers that have explored the new possibilities offered by Silverlight already know that they can extensively customize the look and feel of controls for applications through themes. In the particular case of the latest Silverlight 4 themes, ‘Cosmopolitan’ is based on the Metro UI. However, the Cosmopolitan label has nothing to do with the actual moniker for the Windows Phone 7 design language, codename Metro.
You can find these new themes here