CONTENT MOVED: Iconic Tile template for Windows 10

Content moved

Please see the article on docs.microsoft.com for the latest documentation.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2015
  Why are the two OS tiles different? What's the point of the universal app design if a Dev has to create two different tile icons for their universal apps? This really should be rectified. And I'd tend toward the design of the WP tile. It makes better use of the space available. The square asset of the Windows 10 tile is not a good use of the space available.

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2015
  Hey Benjamin, thanks for the feedback. We are aware that we still haven't reached full unification. However, the fact that Desktop even supports this template is a step towards unification. Back on Windows 8.1, Desktop didn't even support this template at all. As for the slight visual difference (I agree the square aspect ratio on Desktop is less than optimal) - The square aspect ratio was simply all we could implement on Desktop in the given time. So it wasn't implemented perfectly. If more people actually use this template on Desktop, and complain about the square aspect ratio, then we might have incentive to fix it up. But right now, it's really only used on mobile (Messaging and Phone). As for providing two different tile icons for their universal apps - I would recommend simply providing the square 200x200 image as I said in the blog, since that'll work for both. Like I said, if desktop app devs start using this template, I'll be able to provide incentive that the shell team should fix this template on Desktop! Otherwise, we have bigger fish to fry. And also, this template is a rare special template. In general, we recommend using Adaptive Tile Templates, which you can read about on our blog in a previous post. Those are identical on phone and desktop.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2015
  Looking at these examples, you were also able to customize how bilge looks like. As you know badges by default are smaller and they are on the corner. I wonder if we can customize badges without using iconic templates. Is this documented?

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2015
  @Onur - This template simply "customizes" where the badge is placed. It is the only template like that. You can't customize badges other than what you see here. The template is designed for this specific use case. Tell us what scenario you're trying to achieve and we might be able to help you, or we might be able to use it as motive to implement a feature to customize badge placement!

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2015
  @Andrew: The default behavior of badges is just good. However if all you want to emphasize the badge data or all you have is the badge data itself, then you end up with a relatively empty tile and emphasis is on this very tiny badge number on the corner. The alternative is not to use badge but using a custom text and that is a good solution unless you decide to put the tile on the lock screen. Since in the lock screen all you can show is the badge itself, you can't avoid the badge. The other alternative is to use iconic templates you mention. However one of the main selling points of UWP is now we have adaptive tiles. Using iconic templates just for the sake of styling the badge, feels like going backwards. Finally, I asked in the other post, if we could use the badge only in the lock screen but not on the live tile, that would also present a solution for me. Since on the live tile I can show the number as text with the badge being invisible, and on the lock screen I show the badge. However I am not sure if this scenario is supported or not.

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2015
  What do you want your tile to look like? Show us an example. I agree that using the old "150x150" templates is not optimal, but that's not a good reason to change something that works perfectly fine and really isn't that much of an inconvenience. We have bigger things to tackle. Plus, if you use our NotificationsExtensions.Win10 library, it'll automatically hide the template nonsense behind the scenes, and you don't even need to think about it. You don't even need to touch XML or know how it's constructed. And unfortunately no, if there's a badge, it'll be displayed on the tile. We don't provide a way to hide the badge from the tile.

• Anonymous
  September 30, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2015
  @Alek - The documentation on NotificationsExtensions tells you how to use NotificationsExtensions: github.com/.../Tile-Notifications You have to use the GetXml() method on TileContent to retrieve the content as an XmlDocument, and then pass that to the TileNotification constructor.