I'm developing an WP8.1 application and now when I'm almost done with it, I tried to run the Windows App Certification Kit to test if everything is ok. I got this error:
I know that this is not a big thing (it should be really easy to fix it) but I would like to make the images to be as great a possible. I have found the default sampled in the Assets folder, but I don't really know how they should look like at the end.
Could someone provide me with some samples (perhaps some samples he used) for the following images:
ApplicationIcon.png
BadgeLogo.png
Logo.png
SplashScreen.png
SquareTile71x71.png
SquareTile150x150.png
StoreLogo.png
WideLogo.png
And the ones in the Tiles folder that is also inside the Assets folder:
FlipCycleTileLarge.png
FlipCycleTileMedium.png
FlipCycleTileSmall.png
IconicTileMediumLarge.png
IconicTileSmall.png
PS
I'll make my own pictures (I can post them later if you would like that) But I would just like to see some examples to know how that should look like.
The image requirements are relatively simple;
There are 7 images that you can specify in the appxmanifest, and can refer to any image within the project (so the exact filenames aren't strictly required, although I would stick with them). Each image can be supplied at three scales, and if you only supply one scale, make it the 240% scale for the best impression on higher resolution devices.
The Square 71x71 Logo, Square 150x150 Logo, Wide 310 x 150 Logo are all used for tile images, when your app is pinned, and would normally contain some kind of logo to represent your app, on a transparent background where it makes sense.
The Square 44x44 Logo is used in the app list, and is generally a scaled version of the tile image, also on a transparent background.
The Store Logo is as used in the store, and again is generally a scaled version of the tile image.
The Badge Logo is used for lockscreen notifications, and only need be specified if your app supports lockscreen notifications. It also must only be white on transparent.
The Splash Screen is shown as your app is loading. Some apps choose to just show a larger version of the logo on a brand colour (e.g. Internet Explorer), others show some form of branding, along with a "loading" type of message.
Microsoft do also publish some guidelines for design, available from the dev centre
Related
Some websites, such as Google Docs, employ a single image file divided into sprites in order to show all the icons on the UI.
Here's an example: https://ssl.gstatic.com/docs/documents/share/images/sprite-24.svg
The image is used as background and translated to only show the wanted icon.
I'm looking to gain some knowledge on why this pattern is used. Are there any advantages, for example from a performance standpoint?
Just by looking at it, I can see how it'd make it more tedious for example to change an icon, requiring a change of the whole image. Also, positioning the icons correctly across devices looks like a pain.
Why would an app developer choose to use this pattern to display icons on a UI?
Can anyone help me understand why my images are coming out rotated? The images themselves are vertically oriented, but they appear sideways in the web page.
sorry, here is the link
If you're on MacOS or iOS then photos that were taken with incorrect orientation data (because your phone had rotation lock enabled for example) then Finder, Lightroom, Apples Photos app and others can automatically detect this and rotate the photos without changing the original file. But a (non Apple) web server or even Windows, won't recognise these properties out of the box, as these non-destructive edits are stored separately.
If your going to run into this a lot I would recommend installing either a bootstrap compatable extension to batch edit photos server side, or run a batch conversion on your computer or mobile device that "physically" rotates your photos and re-saves the change to the file itself.
This last option is somewhat destructive if you overwrite jpg files as jpg with a compression less than 100% (which is usually the case.)
If you resize photos before uploading to your server anyway the rotation data should already be applied and I advice you to do all edits in one go so the photos only get re-saved once, and not deteriate each time you resave.
One small power tip: you can give very large photos a much higher jpg compression than small photos, but get photos that are, sharper, bigger and with smaller file sizes than if you had prepared a medium downscaled copy that requires a low compression (aka high detail level) setting to still look good. This neat method also makes sure your photo galleries are retina compatable and future proof.
I know that there are many devices that uses the favicon from the website in different ways...
On these favicon generator websites you can easy put an image there and the website will do the rest (generating several scaled images for certain devices)
If i want to cover ALL devices (Apple, Android, Windows Metro Tiles, and more) i would have to store 26 images (that are ALL the same picture just with different sizes)
And i would have to add 19 lines of HTML code to refer the certain devices to the certain images.
Is there a way to use just 1 file for all sizes?
I know that an ICO-File can contain multiple dimensions of an image.
I also know that a SVG-File doesn't depend on pixel resolution at all because it's vector based. (So a SVG can support EVERY imaginable size)
I could imagine to implement all sizes of an image to just a ICO or a SVG file where every device can pick it's optimal size.
Is that possible?
Its not exactly possible to serve different sized PNGs' in a single file.
SVG file would be the best hope here but.. Browsers today don't like them
Alternate option would be to use a tool that manages this process automatically.
I had the same frustration as you, so I simply came up with this tool called MakeFavicon
It helps create multiple favicons with predefined sizes and filenames at a desired folder, and also creates config files such as browserconfig.xml,manifest.json, partial view of HEAD to be included with relevant info.
I'm using it as a part of my Visual Studio build process and it works seamlessly to update all these files on every build.
Here's link to its example usage.
I take several photos using iPad. I take them in different orientations (rotate iPad every time on 90 degrees).
Then I download them to my Windows laptop and what I see? I don't see them as I saw them on the screen of iPad. Actually, there is only one valid image. Others are rotated.
I found this problem in browser (FF & Chrome). When you display image using img html tag it is rotated. But if you display it by entering image's full URL - it's totally OK.
I checked pictures via Safari on iPad - they look fine (in img tag), but don't in Windows.
Is there some metadata which shows that image should be rotated or smth like this?
As you know, the iPad has a hardware device in it that tells it the device orientation, which is how it determines how to display the screen to the user. While the hardware instantly knows how it's positioned at any given time, they seem to have engineered a lag into the software registering this change to improve the user experience (so the screen doesn't flip back and forth several times in a single second). However, this lag might lead to some unexpected results when taking a photo.
I have found that the orientation is most often unexpected with the iPhone / iPad when I am taking photos with my screen facing downward (i.e. taking a picture of something on a tabletop, for example). I assume landscape but get portrait, and vice versa. In that scenario (downward / flat), it is more difficult for the device to know what my intended orientation is.
I find the best way to resolve this is to hold the device in the clear orientation that I want for a second before I take the photo, then point the camera downward and snap.
The orientation data is included in an image's metadata (AKA exif data). You can take a look here for more information:
http://www.daveperrett.com/articles/2012/07/28/exif-orientation-handling-is-a-ghetto/
It is relatively easy to retrieve (and modify) the exif data in software. If you are doing lots of batch processing in some type of custom way, libraries are available to help with this for a variety of frameworks. But for small jobs, the absolute most simple way is to click the little "rotate" icon in the image viewer software within Windows which will make the update for you.
The appxmanifest has entries for developers to fill in four different tile resolution images for each kind of tile (small, medium, wide, large), the different resolutions are: scale-180, scale-140, scale-100, scale-80.
From what I can tell if the developer fills in the largest resolution image (scale-180) the system will automatically scale it down when needed on lower resolution displays, thus it works everywhere. So do most developers really even need to bother filling in all the different tile resolution images? Seems like it will just bloat the size of the application for nothing.
My question about filling in the different resolution images not about whether I need to have the small, medium, wide and large images.
It's certainly not necessary, but it is recommended. Scaling images down (or up) can cause visual artifacts that may not be present in the original image. It may be the case that a particular image looks fine in all scaling plateaus, but others may not (this is especially true for bitmap images). Again, it is up to your discretion, but worth visual inspection at each scaling level.
MSDN has a scaling guidelines document that could be helpful.
See the reasons for filling wide tile and small tiles are for different reason.
1 - wide tile
if your app has a live tile notification feature then u need to implement it. But not mandatory. Just a criteria of metro app.
2 - small tile. This is the by default tile of the application so you should go ahead and add it. If theres no live tile concept then you can fill only small tile. The square one.
3 - then there is a place to put in the image that will be used as a tile icon when user searches for it.
and then there is store logo.
all these are by default set to one cross marked logo. Which u generally see. None of them are mandatory but finally while uploading to the store they will become requirement specific and mandatory. Otherwise you will get a long list of improvements to be done on your app from microsoft. :) . Have faced that .