Friday, 8 August 2014

Windows App Testing :: Windows App UI Components :: Tiles & Notifications

In this article I am sharing my knowledge about the Tiles and Notifications used in the Windows Phone app. To know about the components of Windows Phone app which I have shard in my last post,  please click here

TILE
App tile which is used for launching the app is present in the device home screen (if pinned to home screen) and app list screen. The tiles are of different types
  • Live
  • Static 
                     


Live Tile
Live tile are used for updating the current event occurrence to the user.  It comprises of Notifications, Logo, and Badges. Different sizes are applied to the tile set up. They are Small, Medium, Wide, Large.

The tile can contain text, Images or both. It can also contain badge and logo or a name. The badges are shown at the lower right corner of the tile. Name or Logo will be placed at the right end corner of the tile.
Example: Weather report app, Sports.

Static Tile
Static tile show the default content. When your app is not intended to share the live content then a static tile could be preferred.
Example: Game app.

Secondary Tile
They are pinned to the Start screen to provide a user with a consistent and efficient way to launch directly into a frequently used area of the parent app.

Splash Screen
The first screen that appears when the app was launched by the user is called as splash screen.


NOTIFICATION
Notifications can be sent to the tile by the app when it is running, retrieved periodically from a specified Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), or sent by a cloud-based service associated with the app. In the latter case, notifications are routed through the Windows Push Notification Services (WNS).
The different kinds of notifications used are
  • Periodic
  • Push
  • Raw
  • Scheduled
  • Toast
Periodic
By polling a cloud service for new content, periodic notifications updates tile and badges in a fixed interval of time. At the start of each interval, windows send a request to the service, download the content provided by the service and display a new content in the app tile. Periodic notifications are well suited for the app that is updated at a fixed interval. For example, Weather app context can be updated once in 30 mins.

Push
This is used to send a notification at any time even when the app is not running. For example breaking news, emails can be implemented with the push notifications.  The push notifications could be used while sharing the time sensitive alerts or scheduled alerts.

Scheduled
The scheduled notifications are used when the app tile is updated regularly or when the toast needs to be send within the app.  
Example:  Calendar app

Raw
Raw is a type of push notification without any associated UI. Raw notifications could be used for multiple purposes like
  • Triggering the app to run a background task
  • To inform the user when there is a data available for download from its cloud service.

For more information, refer the URL given below:

My next blog post will contains the information about the “controls” used in windows phone app.

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