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I have a regular Windows API (not metro) application that I would like to have a live (periodically updating) Start Menu tile on Windows 8, instead of a static start menu shortcut.

I tried to navigate the MSDN maze related to this topic, but it appears to come with the assumption that I'm building a Metro app. I don't need a Metro application, I just would like to push some information into a tile that when clicked will still execute my regular WinApi application.

If these APIs are not available in WinAPI, what is the smallest "glue" that can be used for this purpose? E.g. can I have some minimal HTML + Javascript Metro component that will access my application via COM and just craft the needed text + images for the tile?

haimg
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  • It's my experience that anything you execute on Metro (even a Win32 app) will wind up as a tile on the Metro/Windows 8 side of the house. The real "gotcha" is that "true metro" apps have a special (App-store compatible) install procedure. Win32 apps are not invited. So the short answer is "I don't think you can do it explicitly ... but I think you'll get pretty much the desired result anyway" ;) – paulsm4 Aug 16 '12 at 05:00

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Desktop applications can not have live tiles, and afaik there's no way for a metro app to talk directly to a desktop one. You could implement a minimal HTTP server in your desktop app and then write a metro app that gets data via that and updates the tile.

Jonathan Potter
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