Android .xml files: Why do predefined colors not work for me?

Question

When I look at misc. Android tutorials and examples when it comes to specifying colors I very often see constants like @color/red or @color/black etc. being used. For some strange reason that NEVER works for me! I always need to specify colors using the "#RGB", #ARGB, ..., #AARRGGBB notation.

As soon, as I try to use any of those mnemonic constants like e.g. "@color/red" I am getting error messages like these:

[...] C:\Users\mmo\Test\res\drawable\edit_text.xml:5: error: Error: No resource found that matches the given name (at 'drawable' with value '@color/orange'). [...] C:\Users\mmo\Test\res\drawable\myDrawable.xml:3: error: Error: No resource found that matches the given name (at 'drawable' with value '@color/black'). [...] C:\Users\mmo\Test\res\drawable\myDrawable.xml:4: error: Error: No resource found that matches the given name (at 'drawable' with value '@color/black'). [...] C:\Users\mmo\Test\res\drawable\myDrawable.xml:5: error: Error: No resource found that matches the given name (at 'drawable' with value '@color/green'). [...] C:\Users\mmo\Test\res\drawable\myDrawable.xml:6: error: Error: No resource found that matches the given name (at 'drawable' with value '@color/black'). 

Why is that so? Why can't I use these predefined constants? Do I need to prefix them with some package name (I tried @android:color/red but that only caused a different error)? Do I need to specify these colors myself? If so: how and where? Any ideas or suggestions?

Michael

Answer 1

If you want to use the colors pre-defined in the Android platform, the syntax is @android:color/white. The "android:" at the beginning indicates that the resource is not part of your application.