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windows-phone-8windows-phone-8.1

How To Create Custom Transparent Tile with a Simple White Image in Center

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(source: heidibone.com)

I'm on Visual Studio Express 2012 writing a WP8 app, but wanting to create Transparent custom tiles, when the WP8.1 users manually create custom tiles through the app, that allow them to see their Background Start Screen Image.

My graphics knowledge is about rock bottom, and so not sure if I use something like WriteableBitmapEx to even start.

Note: My main App pinned Tile will not be transparent, and that's okay.

It's only when I create a custom tile, such as the Local Scout or Data Sense one above - but my tiles would simply have a 3 White Letters in the center, like "ABC".

Does anyone know of a resource that steps you through that, or have a code example? (The examples I've found through searching on Bing are only for advanced examples of fancy graphics on an actual XAML page).

Solution

  • To make the tiles transparent you just need to use transparent PNGs. If the tile names are from a finite set, just create the tile images in a tool like Paint.NET and bundle them with the app.