András Velvárt

Very nice, keep it up!

I am really glad that you are doing this series, Corrina and John!

But I don't necessarily agree with all that's been said.

For example, Corrina said that a colorful icon sticks out like a sore thumb... which is true, but we have to stick out from the thousands of apps in the Marketplace, and you simply cannot do that with one more "white-on-accent color" icon. This is a choice we consciously took with SurfCube, and even if it hurts the Metro concept, it works for us (being a top 2-5 paid nongame app).

For the splash screen, I would not use the first screen of an app. Your app may be loading for a few more seconds, and the user thinks it's done, but when he / she touches the screen, the app will not respond. Bad UX! My favorite splash screen is the one of the Beez app, which starts to animate when loading is complete into the first screen.

I agree with the other tips, but animated splash screens should be used sparely - popups are not gpu accelerated, and the animation can take a lot of CPU cycles, making the actual startup a lot longer despite the user being entertained.

If I sound a bit negative, it's because I care... It is fantastic to have more UX content on Silverlight TV, looking forward the next episodes!

I plan on getting you guys to learn my name sooner ot later with further posts to cover

Thank you guys for putting my blog post about Silverlight 3 adoption in your show! FYI: I am a guy, but if I put my entire name ("András Velvárt") on the blog, you still probably would have had difficulty figuring that out... I'll get a picture up though, thanks for the reminder