Having had to certify a Web Application for use on the HTC Windows Phone 8X, as well as the Microsoft Surface Tablet, I was interested in providing a Start Screen Tile similar to that of the application’s current iOS Web Clip Icon. Not the least, the new Tile Based UI in Windows 8 presents significant UX improvements over that which has been seen in previous versions of Windows; thus, I felt compelled to take advantage of the new UI from a Web Application context.

Conveniently, adding a Windows 8 Start Screen Tile (Pinned Site) can be accomplished quite easily, and in much the same way as that which is used when specifying a Web Application to run in standalone-mode on iOS. To do so, one need only add additional meta elements with a name attribute of msapplication- followed by a specific Tile property. A standard content attribute can then be used to provide the corresponding attribute value.

For example, a Tile can be defined with a specific color using msapplication-TileColor:

Likewise, a specific Tile image can be provided using msapplication-TileImage:

Note: Tile images should be 144x144px, in .png format (transparent).

This site, for instance, utilizes both of the above:

While creating and defining a Start Screen Tile is simple enough, Microsoft also provides a handy Web based utility which allows for automating the Pinned Site creation process by generating a selected Tile Image in the correct dimensions, and providing the corresponding source at www.buildmypinnedsite.com

Tags: Live Tile, Metro, Pinned Site