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FIGURE 13-14 Push notifications originate with an always-running web service and are then sent to the Windows
Push Notification Service for delivery to specific clients (a specific app on a specific user device) through their
registered WNS channels.
A helpful summary of these different update mechanisms can be found on Choosing a notification
delivery method in the documentation, a topic that includes various examples of when you might use
each method. Whatever the case, we’re now ready to see the details of how we employ all of them in an
app to help keep a system alive with activity.
Tiles, Secondary Tiles, and Badges
The very first thing you should know about your app tile is that if you want to enable live wide tiles
(including secondary ones), you must include a wide logo image in the Application UI section of your
manifest as shown below. Without it, you can still have live square tiles, but wide tile updates will be
ignored.
At this point I encourage you to go back to Chapter 3, “App Anatomy and Page Navigation,” and
review the “Branding Your App 101” section where we discuss how different bits in the manifest affect
your tiles, such as the Short Name and Show Name settings. As also covered in that section, remember
to provide different scaled versions of your logo and wide logo images. Even though you might issue
tile updates as soon as your app is run, your static tiles will be essential to the user’s first impression of
your app after it’s acquired from the Windows Store. The static tiles are also what the user will see if he
or she turns your live tiles off or if all your updates expire. So, even if you plan for live tiles, be sure to
still invest in great static tile designs as well.
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