Chapter 12. The splash screen, app tile, and notifications
This chapter covers
- Splash screens
- Extending the splash screen
- Static and live tiles
- Notification toast
As I sit here writing this book on my main PC, my remote desktop session into one of my Windows 8 tablets is showing me a colorful Start page, full of information. I can see that I have unread email and that a friend’s birthday is tomorrow. I can see that my wife commented on a photo of mine on Facebook, and I can see the rather humorous label my son gave to a picture in his workbook. I can also see that my next possible achievement in Minesweeper will be “Savior of the world.”
All these apps are providing information to me, beckoning me to use them, to crack them open and consume the bits. The description of the Start page sounds, perhaps, a bit busy or even distracting, but it isn’t. The presentation of this information is uniform. The animations aren’t too crazy, and most important, the information is useful.
Even the tiles that aren’t animating are providing useful info. I can see the temperature is 52 degrees outside right now. This is important, because my current home office is in the basement corner, in a room with no windows. It’s how I maintain my authentic computer-geek, milky-white complexion.