Jul 29, 2012

Windows Phone 8 upcoming Live Tile feature

archiecoder Windows Phone 8

With all the buzz this week about the Windows Phone 8 SDK leak, I couldn’t resist installing it.

The title of the SDK is Windows Phone 8 Developer Preview. There are so many cool new features that initially, I didn’t know where to start. I decided to start with one of the new features of the live tiles, since this is the Windows Phone’s biggest strength.

I don’t know the exact feature name, but it’s about cycling images in a live tile. Here is a little video that will help to describe the feature.

Have you spotted the difference between the Windows Phone 7 badge count and the new OS? It is now in a square instead of a circle!

What I love about Microsoft is that they make it easy for developers to use their APIs.

Follow these two steps to accomplish what you see in the video:
1- Add up to 9 images to the project and set the Build Action to Content. The images need to be local only.
2- Append the following code

ShellTile appTile = ShellTile.ActiveTiles.First();

if (appTile != null)
{
    Uri uri1 = new Uri("/Assets/UltimatePokerManager.png", UriKind.Relative);
    Uri uri2 = new Uri("/Assets/YourShape.png", UriKind.Relative);

    CycleTileData cycleTileData = new CycleTileData
                                        {
                                            Count = 3, 
                                            CycleImages = new[] {uri1, uri2}
                                        };

    appTile.Update(cycleTileData);
}

The UtimatePokerManger.png and YourShape.png have the size 173×173. When you watched the video, the images were expanded.

Please note that the SDK is in preview and there is no guarantee that the APIs will be the same in the released version, but I bet this feature will stay as it is.

This was my first Windows Phone 8 blog post and is surely not the last!