Chapter 13. Portraying Your App with Live Tiles

A live tile is a dynamic visual representation of your app that resides on the phone’s Start Experience. Tiles serve not only as a shortcut to your app but they also provide a glimpse of your app’s activities; providing feedback to the user even when your app is not running in the foreground. Each app on the phone can be associated with a single application tile and multiple secondary tiles.

This chapter begins with an overview of the different types of tile templates. You see how text and images are arranged in the flip, cycle, and iconic tile templates.

The chapter then explains how to update tiles programmatically from a foreground or background app.

Finally, the chapter explores the phone’s lock screen. You see how to change the lock screen’s background image and how your app’s primary tile can be used to provide notification text and other content for the lock screen.