Watercolor
| Microsoft Windows visual style | |
 Watercolor in Windows XP build 2410 | |
| Also known as | Business, Professional |
|---|---|
| Included in | Windows XP beta builds |
| First seen in | build 2223 |
| Last seen in | build 2419 |
Watercolor (also known as Business or Professional) is the name of a placeholder visual style created by Microsoft during development of the Windows XP operating system. The first known build to include it was build 2223; however, there was no user interface to enable it and it was largely incomplete. By build 2250, the Desktop control panel was enhanced to support the new visual styles and the theme was much more polished compared to its previous version featured in build 2223. Because of this, it is often mistakenly considered to be the first build to include the visual style, especially since the theme was not discovered in build 2223 until much later. The last known build to include the Watercolor theme was build 2419, although the resources for the theme remained in the Windows codebase as late as build 3790. Although it was intended as a placeholder for Luna, Watercolor received several overhauls and improvements over time.
The early variant of the Watercolor visual style found in builds 2223 and 2250 was a dark blue and gray theme that was reminiscent of the classic theme used by Windows 2000 and earlier. The theme was later updated by build 2257 to use brighter shades of blue with red frames for disabled windows. The embedded theme.ini also includes a commented out section for a Champagne color scheme, which was likely used for testing purposes prior to build 2250 but is not functional in any known build:
;[ColorScheme.Champagne]
;FromColor1 = 210 213 206
;ToColor1 = 210 20 20
;FromColor2 = 190 250 190
;ToColor2 = 250 220 220
Gallery[edit | edit source]
Early mockup
Business theme in build 2223
Professional theme in build 2250
Professional theme in build 2257
Professional theme in build 2267
Professional theme in build 2276
Watercolor theme in build 2410
Watercolor theme in build 2419
