Metro applications can have a colour set, which appears on their shortcut on the start screen, and also on any dialogs and UI elements, so users can recognise the application, for example helping them associate toasts with the source application quickly.
So far so good. Traditional shortcuts to desktop applications also appear on the start screen. They don't have a colour, and any toast notifications they send have a grey background. Microsoft's own applications such as VS2012, redone in semi-metro-style, also have a colourless start screen tile.
How can a colour be set for the start screen shortcut, or toast notifications, for a desktop application?
For desktop apps, the background color used on Start screen tiles and toast notifications is not configurable by the app itself. The color is determined by the Start screen color theme chosen by the user (PC Settings -> Personalize -> Start screen).
For the toast notifications, here are some resources:
Quickstart: Sending a toast notification from the desktop: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh802768.aspx
Sending toast notifications from desktop apps sample: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/sending-toast-notifications-71e230a2
I hope this helps with notifications!
--ed
Related
In my app design, I have a dropdown menu from the top as the user swipes down the top edge of the screen. This interferes with the Push notification tray. Is there any way to disable the default tray dropdown when my app is in the foreground?
Currently, there is no public API for manipulating the behavior of the notification center or how to prevent it.
I think it is a design decision to keep a consistent user experience at the price of developer freedom. I do not think it's not likely that an app will ever be able to block a notification's appearance, and only slightly less unlikely that an app would be able to prevent the notification center from appearing.
After all, it is what made iOS so successful. The consistency between the operating system and apps in general.
Before windows 8, if application want to non-intrusively inform user that something happens, it displays tray icon, maybe animated. For example, if e-mail application finds a new e-mail, it displays a new tray icon (outlook) or animate it's own icon in tray (all other e-mail clients).
With new Windows 8 Metro UI it's a new screen with tiles that supposed to be a main thing user will use to launch and switch apps. Where is no tray area in this mode, but many other things - charms area, something like status area that displays clock and battery usage etc.
According to Microsoft Metro UI design guides - what is the new place for poor e-mail app notification icon?
I think what you want is a notification. There are three kinds of notifications: a tile update, a badge update on the tile or a "toast" in the upper right corner of the screen (when in another application). The various options for these types of notifications are listed here.
The new place to let someone know your app has updated information is the tile itself.
These are called "Live Tiles" because they're intended to be dynamic, and change as new data becomes available.
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-feature-focus-tiles-143175
I want to know that how we can change the background color for the toast notification in Windows Metro (or Desktop) app.
Thanks in advance.
Foreground:
You can set "Foreground text" in you app manifest to dark or light.
Background:
This follows the "Background color" of the app manifest - and hence will be the same as the app's tile background.
For most of the apps I've worked on, it's enough to set the tile color according the UI spec - and then set the 'foreground text' to light or dark. You can surely override the light/dark themes if you want to too.
For desktop apps, the background color used on toast notifications (and Start screen tiles) is not configurable by the app itself. The color for the tiles is determined by the Start screen color theme chosen by the user (PC Settings -> Personalize -> Start screen), and the color of the background of toast notifications is always gray (when not in a high-contrast theme).
I think it always use the color that is specified in your manifest file. So to change the color, you have to change the color of your whole application.
I am developing a metro application using visual studio 2012. I am trying to get an AppBar in my metro application. How do I do that?
There are a LOT of samples in the MSDN Dev Center, http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsapps. One of them is specifically an AppBar sample, and the description reads:
This sample demonstrates how to use the AppBar control to present
navigation, commands, and tools to users.
The app bar is hidden by default and appears when users swipe a finger
from the top or bottom edge of the screen. It covers the content of
the app and can be dismissed by the user with an edge swipe, or by
interacting with the app. This sample shows how to add an app bar,
customize the app bar, and control the app bar. Also, it shows how to
use sticky app bars and global app bars.
I think this will get you started.
When you have an app in fullscreen mode (in a fullscreen space) the menubar is hidden unless you "nudge" the top of the screen. However if you hit the spotlight hotkey the menubar politely shifts down into the screen with the spotlight search bar. Excellent.
I am migrating a statusbar/faceless application that I wish to have emulate this spotlight's menubar handling. Under snow leopard the app responds to a system hotkey by displaying a menu (it has a NSStatusBar item and I call popUpStatusItemMenu). Under Lion when the app is in fullscreen mode/space however, the menubar remains hidden for the fullscreen app (note however that the hot key IS bringing up the statusbar item and using the keyboard I can activate individual actions on the menu -- I just can't see the menu pop up).
To reiterate - anyone know how spotlight (under lion) displays the menubar in response to a hotkey? Or should I be asking when a better way to handle my UI would be under Lion?
thanks,
I feel reasonably certain that Spotlight is using private interfaces to change the presentation mode of the login session. You can change the presentation mode for an application using -[NSApplication setPresentationOptions:] (or the deprecated-but-still-available Carbon equivalent SetSystemUIMode()), but these explicitly only propagate to the login session from the “frontmost faceful application”.
I suggest filing a suggestion for an API to request that certain UI elements (menu bar, dock) are shown if they’re currently in autohide mode from the background.