XAML for live tiles
Allow developers to implement an interface(s) on a user control and "submit" that instead of just filling in a tile data structure. This will make tiles truly "live" and open up the live of WP7 to new applications. This is also completely secure because the runtime can analyze the class (and it's IL) being submitted. A bevy of restrictions can also be heaped on the said user control in order to maintain performance and not sap battery life. Let Live tiles be live, please.
Ananth Balasubramaniam
shared this idea
Thank you for the suggestion and commentary thus far. We are not adding this capability in the 8.0 release, but know that it is high on the consideration list for future Windows Phone releases.
Keep those suggestions and votes coming!
5 comments
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Daniel
commented
Needed. Currently, there are Live Tiles for 1st party apps (people, Xbox, etc.) but third party apps are just a template where we can provide data. This is pretty dump in my opinion. Even the counter for notifications on the tile for third party apps (small circle with a number) makes my app look amateurish because first party apps can use big fonts with animated numbers. On iOS and Android, third party apps have a similar look and feel as first party apps. Only in Windows Phone, Microsoft has decided to make third party app developers look bad.
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Ananth Balasubramaniam
commented
Alternate way: Let’s suppose the API allowed us to pass in the URI to a XAML file instead, one that wasn’t allowed to link to any assembly namespaces (so it couldn’t run custom code or require the OS to load in any other assemblies). The OS would load the XAML file from the given URI, verify that it didn’t require or link to any assemblies and set its content root into a “tile”, allowing the XAML to run any animation it needed. Any URI’s that referred to the application’s isolated storage would be redirected to access the appropriate location. Battery life concerns could be addressed by suspending ALL (and I mean ALL) live tile animations when battery saver is enabled. This would allow flexible, really live tiles that would be on par with OS live tiles.
Read more about it here: http://ananthonline.net/2012/01/28/what-windows-phone-does-right-and-what-windows-phone-does-wrong-live-tiles-3/
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Fyter
commented
System can do, App can do too.
Like 'People' tile animation, like SMS's number, like picture tile animation. -
Alex F.
commented
I think you confused WP7's live tiles with Android's widgets. No thanks.
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Ananth Balasubramaniam
commented
Such live tiles can also interact with background agents by being passed in to OnInvoke via ScheduledTask.
