AppxManifest File in Windows Store Apps

Today we will learn about an important file that is associated with your Windows Store project when you create a new Windows Store application. This is the Application Manifest File that Visual Studio will automatically create for your application. This file will be called Package.appxmanifest and it is in the root of the project. Let's see how this file is important to us.

The manifest file contains several information related to our project and we can also edit this file. Visual Studio 2012 offers to the user a GUI form for editing the manifest file.

How to open the Package.appxmanifest file.

• For the manifest editor, go to the Solution Explorer.
• Select the Package.appxmanifest file and simply double-click on it to open it.

Package.appxmanifest file contains 4 types of tab.

• Application UI
• Capabilities
• Declarations
• Packaging

Let's take a look each of these.

Application UI

This tab consists of the basic info about your application:

• Display Name: It contains the title of your application. It will appear on the start screen, search page, etc., wherever the user can see. It can be localized.
• Entry Point: The value of this should be set to the project's App class.
• Description: It contains a description of your app, but the length of the Description can't exceed 2048 characters.
• Supported Rotations: It indicates the app's rotation that your app can support. It is optional.
• Tiles (Logo, Wide Logo and Small Logo): It represent the image or UI portion that you want to show when your application starts. Valid formats for all graphics are .png and .jpg and for each type of tile there is some fixed size of image that you can use.
• Show Name: This contains the name of your app that is displayed on the app tile.
• Foreground Text: It specifies the color of the text that is displayed on the app tile. You can set it to either Light or Dark.
• Background Color: It sets the tile's background color. You can set this either using a valid color name or by using a color code beginning with #.
• Badge Logo: It specifies the points of the graphics that will be displayed on the lock screen as a notification from your application.
• Toast Capable: This option should be set to true if you want to send alerts from the Windows Store app.
• Splash Screen: It specifies the appearance of the splash screen. The Splash Screen is a screen that appears when your app is run. You can specify an image to be displayed on the screen. You can also set its Background Color for that screen.
  

Capabilities

The other option in the application manifest is Capabilities that enables the user to specify the resources that you want to allow your app to access. Your Windows Store app will not be able to use those resources or capabilities that you don't specify in this option. It provides access to the documents library for from the other location in the local PC. For more information visit here:
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464936.aspx#documents_library 

Here's the list of capabilities:


Declarations

This tab is used to add declarations in the Windows Store app and can specify their properties. Declarations are the services for better integration with the system and/or other installed applications. You can set as many more from this tab as you need to.

Windows Store apps are sometimes used to interact with other apps. These apps must include required declarations in the package manifest and call the required Windows Runtime APIs to communicate with Windows and other contract participants. For more information:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464906.aspx

Some of the available declaration are:



Packaging

This tab contains the information that is relevant to deploying and publishing your Windows Store App.

It contains the following types of information:

• Package Name: It uniquely identifies the application. You can say it is like a GUID for your Windows Store app.
• Package Display Name: It displays the name that is displayed to the users.
• Logo: It contains the app store logo.