Why is the .NET Colors class not static?

Question

I was browsing the colors class's source in reflector and it's just a sealed class. But all members are static. So why would anyone create a copy of the Colors class?

It lies inside:

System.Windows.Media.Colors

Answer 1

A static class is just a sealed abstract class with private constructor no constructors (as in, no constructors at any accessibility level, not even ones generated by the compiler) [fixed per Eric's comment]. The C# keyword static is simply a shorthand for that, and also forces you to make all members static, but for API clients it's exact same thing.

Given that work on WPF (then Avalon) began before .NET 2.0 was released, it could be that this particular class was written before static class appeared. Or perhaps the author was simply unaware of that language feature.