Understanding the Required Artwork for your Windows Phone App

Recently, I contributed an article on the Marketplace Test Kit to Jeff Blankenburg’s 31-days of Mango. The Marketplace Test Kit should be used by all Windows Phone developers to perform a check-point on their app, and it’s requirements, prior to submitting it to the Marketplace. If your app doesn’t pass the test kit, it will certainly fail certification in the Marketplace submission process.

Originally Authored by Dave Bost

One of the Automated Tests within the test kit is to verify you have the correct sized images and file type requirements for your Marketplace artwork.

These are the required artwork items to showcase your app within the various sections of the Marketplace:

One of the attendees from our recent Windows Phone Accelerator labs pinged me the other day for an issue she was having with her images and the Marketplace Test Kit. The Test Kit was reporting an error that stated she had an invalid image size where it was expecting an image size of 62×62.

If you look at the Test Kit, it isn’t asking for an image of 62×62. However… there is a requirement for a 62×62 image, it’s just not listed in the Marketplace Test Kit. The requirement is for the actual application’s icon. This is the icon that is displayed the in application list of the phone once a user downloads your app. There’s also another image that is required at a size of 173×173 (same as the Large Marketplace image) that is your application’s tile for when someone pins your app to their start screen.

So in all, the Marketplace Test Kit is testing image requirements for 5 different tile images. The 3 images required for the Marketplace and the 2 images required for your application on the phone:

You set your small and large app icon’s within your projects Property Page. These are than defined within the WPAppManfest.xml file. It might look confusing, but the Background image property is your application’s Start Screen tile.

Truth be told, the Test Kit validates additional images as it is required that you have at least one screen shot of your app with a size of 800×480 pixels. So don’t forget those images as well. Thankfully, we now have the Screen Capture tool in the Windows Phone Emulator.

You can find all of the requirements for your applications artwork in the Windows Phone Marketplace Documentation.


Source: http://davebost.com/blog/2012/01/26/understanding-the-required-artwork-for-your-windows-phone-app/