Adding Display focus to winrt “metro” live tiles

david g 1

Hey all I am working on getting this glowing border (Microsoft calls it Display focus) working with my Windows 8.1 Grid App WinRT app.

What I am talking about implementing is this (gif animated version here):

I am using "metro" tiles like this:

How it works acording to Microsoft:

Display focus adds an animated glow (a fluorescent light effect) around the border of the element so that you can focus your attention on the focused element.

The demo of this effect is in the XAML Controls Gallery and also here

However, I am unable to get the demo for this working as its a tad confusing on what the user needs to do since it looks nothing like the image demo's.

Those of you who have used this effect before or just know how to add it to my square "metro" live tiles would be great! It's a nifty effect that will help my "10 foot experiennce" even easier to show what is currently being chosen when using a remote.

Fay Wang - MSFT 5,196 Reputation points

2020-06-16T05:46:16.877+00:00

When you try to display focus, you need to set the Application.FocusVisualKind as Reveal, but the method only works for windows 10 and I didn't find the similar property in windows 8.1. So you might need to implement it manually, for example, when the item gets focus, you could add the light effect on it, make the border wider and change its background.