Windows 8 : Tiles

FAQs

Q1. What is a tile?

Ans : A tile is an app's representation on the Start screen.

Q2. What is a tile used for?

Ans : A tile is basically used to represent necessary information to user , when the app itself is not running.

Q3 : Where can I place tiles?

Ans : You can either place a tile in Windows 8 start screen or you can place the same in the lock screen.

Q4 : How can I launch an app from a tile?

Ans : a. Tap b. Click

Q5 : How can I represent a tile?

Ans : A tile can be a wide tile or a square tile.
Tile can be  a text only tile , image only tile or  a tile with text + image.
Tiles can be single framed or two stacked framed also called as peek template.
A tile can be a live tile or a static tile

 Best Practices:

a. Dos : Tiles should be simple and informative.

    Don'ts :Do not use colors on tiles unnecessarily.

 

b. Dos : Use live tiles , when you think the user needs to be updated with new data.

    Don't : Don't overuse live tiles if they are not really necessary.

 

c. Dos : Select between a square tile and a wide tile with proper judgement.

    Don't : Don't put a wide tile , just because you want more space on the desktop.

    User can always readjust your tile size.

 

d. Dos : Give appropriate text to your tile. The text should be contextual.

    Don't : Don't add user interaction texts on tile like 'click' ,'press' ,'tap' etc 

 

e. Dos : Use Live tiles to show application notifications.

    Don't : Don't use live tiles to show advertisements.

 

   

Deciding between a square tile and wide tile:

By default a windows app applies square logo. In case you want to provide a wide logo with your app , you can specify the wide logo image in the app manifest. In case a wide logo image is not defined in the manifest the tile cannot be widened but in case a wide logo has been set , user can always resize it to square logo.

 

You should use a wide logo ,

a. when you need to display a large content of data.

b. when you have a live tile which gets refreshed frequently.

 

 You can also read this article at dotnetspider