WindowsPhone 8.0 : Change default Emulator skin border with Skin Switcher,Beginners Tip

Introduction:

Are you got bored with the default skin of Windows Phone 8 Emulator? You can change the look of your Windows Phone 8 emulator by using the WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher to make it look like a Nokia Lumia 920, HTC 8X or Samsung Ativ S.

If you want to change border of windowsphone 7 emulator default skin ,you may visit Windows Phone 7 Emulator Skin Switcher

Description:

In the Windows Phone 8 Emulator Skin Switcher you can choose between 17 different skins from all currently available Windows Phone 8 devices.

WVGA

• WP8 Default
• HTC 8S Blue
• HTC 8S Orange
• Nokia Lumia 820 Black
• Nokia Lumia 820 Cyan
• Nokia Lumia 820 Red
• Nokia Lumia 820 White
• Nokia Lumia 820 Yellow

WXGA

• WP8 Default
• Nokia Lumia 920 Black
• Nokia Lumia 920 Grey
• Nokia Lumia 920 Red
• Nokia Lumia 920 White
• Nokia Lumia 920 Yellow

720p

• WP8 Default
• HTC 8X Black
• HTC 8X Blue
• HTC 8X Neon
• HTC 8X Red
• Samsung Ativ S

Note:The Windows Phone 7 emulator skin switcher currently has 25 skins.

Using the emulator skin switcher is easy. download the latest release, install it and launch the application,lets follow a few steps to use skin switcher.

1)Download and Installing:

Download WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher from CodePlex.And unzip folder,then you will be found 'WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher.exe' file,for install double click on it.

And follow two more steps that are displayed in wizards ,click install,after some time installation wizard will be closed and will ask for finish,then our WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher like below:

2)Launch WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher :

we can launch Skin Switcher with two ways

• From start screen,search for 'WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher' and tap on it
• And other hand is,go to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Geert van der Cruijsen\WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher' and double click on 'wp8skinswitcher.exe' file

So from any one of above steps you can launch it.Just start the skin switcher, select a skin and restart your emulator. You can select up to 3 different skins at the same time. 1 for each emulator resolution.However now i selected following emulator(WVGA:HTC 8s Orange):

3)How to test my app with new skinned emulator?

Open 'Vs Express for Windows Phone' and create new project(Ex:WP8EmulatorSkinTest)

Choose emulator 'Emulator WVGA 512 MB' .

Press 'F5' to run the app,Now our newly selected skin switcher emulator will be launched like below:

Summary:

In this article, we learned 'How to change default Emulator skin border with WP8 Emulator Skin Switcher'. 

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