How usefull are Live Tiles ?

datisdesign

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I love windows phone, I was windows mobile user and after announcing windows phone 7 I bought HD7,
one of the main strength factors of windows phone which Microsoft really bold it is Live Tile !

Modern (metro) design language is about content, giving user the information he/she wants, when you see your start screen you don't need to open each app to see the updates everything you need are showing on start screen and live tiles, but in real life most apps doesn't have useful live tiles, except for the weather apps !!

for example email and sms app only shows email items (wp7), calendar shows only one item, and ....

whats the difference between an app icon which has number of notification items above it and a live tile with a notification number on it ?!

What I am trying to say is that what Microsoft tries to achieves is far from reality, you cant see whats new in every app without opening it !
 

dipayanster

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but in real life most apps doesn't have useful live tiles, except for the weather apps
i use the following live tiles, all work beautifully
alphajax, baconit, fuse, weatherflow, timespoynt, icq
i am not including market place/games/email/messaging/phone live tiles in this list as they are system default and i use smallest versions of them usually.

whats the difference between an app icon which has number of notification items above it and a live tile with a notification number on it ?!
a live tile is
notification numbers on front side of tile
+
snippet of latest notification on back side of tile
+
latest image (front or back side)
 

WorzelGummage

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One obvious drawback to "Live" tiles is that they can only update the info once every 30 minutes. So in the case of a battery monitoring app the tile isn't as useful as it could be because it may not show the correct percentage.
 

Gergolos

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One obvious drawback to "Live" tiles is that they can only update the info once every 30 minutes. So in the case of a battery monitoring app the tile isn't as useful as it could be because it may not show the correct percentage.

That is not true... At least not 100%... If you have push notifications activated for that particular app, the live tile will update every time you get a new push notification... If you just pinned the tile (no push) then you are, of course, completely right. I still don't know if i like the 30min limitation here, or not^^ I don't need it, so thatswhy i have no problem with it I guess


@OP: Just because not all the developers don't use the awesome tile-function it does not mean that MS is not being realistic... There are some pretty nice apps using the live-tile function.

Besides: not only the "live"-tiles, but the tiles themselves are pretty awesome and unique in the way they work... I use the possibility to pin alsmost everything from inside different apps on my homescreen almost every day. Different articles from news apps, my train/flight-info and so on... not the apps themselves, but the particular information from inside the app... i just have to click on the tile and the app opens directly where I want it to open... and if you combine this with the "live-tile"-option, you have pretty awesome and functional homescreens...

So, in my opinion, MS did a wonderful job here!
 

datisdesign

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I know that Microsoft did a wonderful job with WP and I love it. But I think there are some limitations in interface which I am sure will be better and will be more mature with pass of time
but I think developers and designers should pay more attention on the concept of modern UI

some apps when the back of the tile is showing if the notification is too long you cant fully understand the message of notification which it could be fixed by some minor changes on UI
 

Gergolos

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Actually I don't get what you are trying to say...

So in your first posting you said

"whats the difference between an app icon which has number of notification items above it and a live tile with a notification number on it ?!

What I am trying to say is that what Microsoft tries to achieves is far from reality, you cant see whats new in every app without opening it !"


So what I get from this lines is: MS had a nice idea, but could not realize it...

Which is, in my opinion, not true. The only limitation I think is really one, would be "live tiles only update every 30min". And this is, in my case, totally ok...

All the other things MS wanted with the tiles do work. They try to improve the tile-functionality and thatswhy we all will have the wider tiles for example.

"for example email and sms app only shows email items (wp7), calendar shows only one item, and ...."

As I already said: you can not show text with 200 characters in a little box... thatswhy it was not possible for wp7... but after the wp7.8 update you will have the possibility to change the tilesizes AND see the first lines from your emails and so on... so... MS doing a nice job and improving there idea once again...

After saying all this you change your point and say "(...) but I think developers and designers should pay more attention on the concept of modern UI". Yeah thats right... but what does MS have to do with developers who don't want to use all the nice stuff MS gives them?

"some apps when the back of the tile is showing if the notification is too long you cant fully understand the message of notification which it could be fixed by some minor changes on UI"

Hmm?? The app developer can change the tiles the way they like. Do you mean the font size? If so...You will not have much more text (at least if you want to read whats written there) packed in the tile if you use smaller font-sizes... You might fit in a word or two more...but I don't think that would make a huge difference...

So all in all:

Let the Developers fully implement the possibilities they get from WP and we can talk about the small limitations after that...
 

manicottiK

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One obvious drawback to "Live" tiles is that they can only update the info once every 30 minutes.
The "periodic task" part of the app gets run every 30 minutes and can update tiles, but that's really a "pull" update. Pulls are the only workable method when the information to be shown is local to the phone (like the phone's battery level or weather for where the phone is located). When the information doesn't depend on in-phone information AND when the developer does the work needed, updates can be "pushed" from servers to the phone at greater frequency.

Our university portal app takes good advantage of tile space by doing the following on its pinned tiles:
1. For classes: front shows a count; back says how many new announcements, events, or grades have been entered by the professor.
2. For debit card: front shows the dollar balance; back shows number of meals and guest passes remaining.
3. For coop: front shows count; back shows date/time of next 2 interviews.
4. For academics: front shows count; back shows number of classes with new announcements, events, or grades (this is like a summary so that students don't have to pin every course).
5. For leave time: front shows number of days employee can take off; back shows details of vacation, personal, and sick days.
6. Main app tile: front shows our "photo of the day" (even though it changes several times a day); back shows photo caption and credit).

All of our front counts are done in the style that the mail or store tiles use rather than the number in a circle style. Part of the reason for doing this is consistency and making the app fit in more like it's a first-party app. If we put a lot of info on the front of the tile, the Start screen would begin to look cluttered.

Finally, our tiles were built for WP7 and 7.5. Our final release for that OS is going through certification now; the next one will target WP8. With the options available through the different tile sizes, we'll rethink what we show when. A lot of developers are probably going through the same thought process of when to switch.
 

mclark2112

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I like them, but they can be enhanced, a lot.

If MS is going to build a Notification Center, then I don't think we will see any change to the live tiles, but I'll ask anyway. For the email and messaging apps, I hate that it only shows a snippet of the most recent email, why can't it scroll all the latest unread emails or texts? It scroll side to side like the Xbox Music tile does. And when I pin a webpage to my home screen, just use the iPhone icon as the tile, it is just a png that exists in the home directory of many websites. Also, we have know scroll to the left, if this isn't used for the notification page, let's get a second home page of pinned apps...
 

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