Windows 8 Pin METAs

By  on  

Windows 8 allows for adding websites as apps (or maybe "bookmarks" is a better term) to the home screen, much in the vein that iOS allows users to do the same.  Like iOS devices, Windows 8 allows  users to accomplish this same task using custom META tags embedded within the page HTML:

<meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#FF0000" />
<meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="/windows8-icon.png" />

The image size should be 144x144 and you'll want to define a custom background color with the META tag above.  Tags like these are invaluable -- very little HTML to add but a giant convenience to users.  Remember that the easier it is to get to your site, the more likely they will come back often!

Recent Features

  • By
    An Interview with Eric Meyer

    Your early CSS books were instrumental in pushing my love for front end technologies. What was it about CSS that you fell in love with and drove you to write about it? At first blush, it was the simplicity of it as compared to the table-and-spacer...

  • By
    Write Better JavaScript with Promises

    You've probably heard the talk around the water cooler about how promises are the future. All of the cool kids are using them, but you don't see what makes them so special. Can't you just use a callback? What's the big deal? In this article, we'll...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    FileReader API

    As broadband speed continues to get faster, the web continues to be more media-centric.  Sometimes that can be good (Netflix, other streaming services), sometimes that can be bad (wanting to read a news article but it has an accompanying useless video with it).  And every social service does...

  • By
    Fullscreen API

    As we move toward more true web applications, our JavaScript APIs are doing their best to keep up.  One very simple but useful new JavaScript API is the Fullscreen API.  The Fullscreen API provides a programmatic way to request fullscreen display from the user, and exit...

Discussion

  1. MaxArt

    I wonder if there are HTTP headers that allows to do the same.

  2. How do you actually go about adding the website as an app in windows 8?

  3. Stephen

    Even though we *can* do this… it really bugs me that we have 8 different ways to set this kind of stuff per browser/device.

    IMHO, it would have been much better if all browsers used the same “link” “favicon” in PNG/GIF/JPG format… and it had attributes for different size icons (device/browser to choose the best size for its needs)

    Instead we have IE searching the at the server root for an icon in *.ico format, special meta tags for iOS, different tags for Windows8, etc. From a *lightweight* mobile perspective… cramming umpteen meta tags in to handle all the potential devices is totally counter productive!

    Oh well… I guess this is progress!

  4. why iOS allows users to do the same.

  5. Magnus

    I agree with Stephen, with every other OS and social media site adding their own meta tags it’s bloating up the element.

  6. Magnus

    That should have read head element.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!