A website to Make Live Tiles for your website

 Smartphones, Windows 10, Windows 8 Tablet  No Responses »
May 282015
 

Just stumbled on this website today, which may come in handy for people that are wanting to help those people with Windows 8 or Windows 10 as well as Windows Phone. This site will help you to create the ability for your site to make a live tile on those devices. That way if a person wants to pin your site to their Start Screen then it will use the icon you set and will also do some live tile stuff making use of your rss feed. It may not be a widely used feature but some of your visitors may appreciate you adding it. You could even use this to make a home page or a jump page for yourself and make one of these tiles and pin it to your phone’s start screen and have a pseudo home page using an icon of your choosing. You just need to set the icon you want and the title and maybe the rss feed and then download the zip file and extract it and upload to the folder your site is in and add the code to your webpage and that is it.
http://www.buildmypinnedsite.com/en

I have also installed Windows 10 on my HTC One M8

 Smartphones, Windows 10  No Responses »
May 282015
 

Ok, I have taken the plunge and installed Windows 10 on my M8, it definitely feels more like a beta than it does for my tablet or laptop. There are some issues with how things look and there are some really slow spots in it as well, seems like mainly when trying to go back to the Start screen and when resuming from an app. I have also noticed that apps and windows seem to stay open after you click the back button, so after a few minutes of using it you could have loads of windows open that you would need to press and hold the back button to close them. The mail app is getting very close to what is on the tablet and laptop, swipe to delete etc. It also seems like the settings area is much better looking than it used to be in WP8.1, although it seemed to look more like a phone settings before. I do not think it is for the feint of heart to install this on your main phone, but it is nice to use it for the most part. There is a setting for having more buttons visible, but I could not get it to take setting it back to do not show more tiles. Another thing about this version, what are they going to call it? It seemed like it would be Windows Phone 10 since that was just the continuation of names through WP7 and WP8, then it seemed like it would be Windows 10 since it was all the same code base, now it seems like it may be Windows 10 Mobile, resurrecting the Windows Mobile from the Windows Mobile 6 days.
One thing I did notice was after the installation happened I saw an update for WP8.1 in my phone updates and could not get it to go away, until I went back in the Windows Insider app and set the setting back to Fast Track, which I had set before so I could get the update in the first place. Once I did that the WP8.1 update disappeared and I have been seeing Windows 10 updates showing up. Speaking of updates, it seems one thing they have not finished yet is a way to force a restart if you happen to miss the window telling you about the restart, I have seen it a couple of times and sometimes it shows up in the update area as a button, but if something goes wrong there is no way to force the restart, and I do not think holding the power button is a legit way to restart.

Trying out Windows 10 Tech Preview on my Dell Venue 8 Pro

 Computers, Personal, Smartphones, Windows 10  No Responses »
Feb 162015
 

I have been running Windows 10 on my tablet now for about 2 months or so, and must say, I absolutely love it. Am I saying this because I am a Microsoft or Windows Lover, no! Even though I do love Windows I have not been a fan of everything that Microsoft has done, yes I own a number of Windows machines and use quite a few Microsoft apps on those machines, I even have used Windows phones consistently since Windows Mobile 3 or so including Windows Phone 7 and 8, but I am not a blind Windows follower, I have tested Linux and Iphones and Android, which have not made me as happy as windows has, I do not like Iphones at all, they do have their merits, but they are just so….dumbed down. I guess enough of that tangent, I have been very happy with Windows 10, I love the new Start screen and how it does not go completely full screen and I love the more desktop feel of it. I have noticed quite a few issues, but it seems MS is fixing a lot of them as time goes on, the new style of releasing builds constantly is awesome and makes you feel you have a say in what is being done. Of course you have to believe they are reading the insider posts and addressing the things users are posting. I cannot wait for my phone to be able to get a build, and hopefully they fill some of the missing features that other devices have in the future versions.

Windows 10 is NOT perfect, hopefully yet, it has a fair amount of issues, like touch keyboard is not consistently popping up on first click of toolbar button and there are many screens that are not easily readable due to some rendering issues, there are also some metro apps that when they go full screen they are not able to be closed via the close button or controlled in any way without pressing just about everywhere on the screen to find something that works. That being said, with Windows 10 being this early in the release window, it is still quite usable as a main O/S and I am looking forward to using it for many years….hopefully. And on top of that they will make it free to Windows 7/8 users for the first year? Yes please!

 

Later everyone.

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