Ex-Microsoft Developer Resurrects Live Tiles to Take On Outlook

Live Tiles were supposed to be extinct. Microsoft took 10 years to gradually phase out the feature from Windows and the tile-based Start Menu seen on Windows 8 and Windows Phone was entirely dropped with the Windows 11 release. 

But in a bizarre twist, the same man who worked at Microsoft is in the works on reviving the feature for an all-new email desktop application that could potentially compete with Outlook, the exact same product line that Microsoft has been encouraging users to use for years.

Microsoft’s design language that led to the interest in the building of DayFrame is the idea that gives it a lot of potential to become a rival to Outlook and what Microsoft abandoned, says Jeff Fritz, who left in the middle of July, is a design language. It is still at a very early stage but it’s enough to make one raise an eyebrow.

Whatever Happened to Live Tiles 

For the uninitiated, Live Tiles were little rectangular icons on the Start Screen that provided you with updates without opening the app: the weather forecast, the next line of an email message or a series of photos without opening the app. 

It was one of the most original ideas ever known to come out of Microsoft, and, within its brief lifespan, “Metro,” as it was known within the company, was the foundation of the company’s design ideals.

It’s also a little ironic that DayFrame’s update is using the same terms, but from someone from the inside, who’s been witnessing years as it slowly faded from a company that has made the decision to take it out altogether.

What DayFrame Actually Is 

DayFrame is not attempting to be simply a replacement of the inbox. Fritz from TheNews said DayFrame is a .NET application developed using .NET MAUI Blazor Hybrid framework for building native-looking apps with web-based components as the driving force for making them work. Which is significant, since it implies a direction in which Fritz’ project could move in the future, as more than a single trick email client.

The app is more than an Outlook clone, it’s a shell that will be able to host other modules that will bounce with email, calendar and contacts and a host of other features are being considered, such as GitHub, photos, social media, instant messaging, a journal, a feed reader and, naturally, a phone home screen.

Each one will be designed and tested as a standalone unit, and then combined together with a shared contract layer to make sure that the project will not be a “buggy mess” for Fritz to add new functions without affecting any existing users, he says. It’s a modular system, just like larger software vendors build enormous libraries of software tools, although it’s smaller and for a personal or small team project.

The Live Tiles element is not just a pretty app-button, however, as it displays a consistent sidebar of Live Tiles, similar to the one users are used to seeing on Windows Phone, and will enable users to access module or information at a glance without having to go into a module to find it. 

Besides, even unused modules can be ‘disabled’, and the colours, font types and sizes of the tiles can be customised, thus giving the user some visual control over the modules which most modern email clients lack, even Outlook.

Not Ready to Download Yet 

At the moment there’s nothing in the public beta for testing, and the features listed here are as they are said to be, and may be augmented or changed or even be removed, between the time it was put into a pre-alpha state and it is finally released to the public.

But it’s an odd thing that it does come at the right time. Fritz’s resignation from Microsoft comes when he’s developing a tool that extracts directly from concepts that have been dropped by Microsoft, using a framework developed and maintained by Microsoft. 

Whether DayFrame will become a fighting chance against Outlook or a place to go down memory lane for Windows Phone users remains to be seen but at least the possibility of Live Tiles’ return, even after Windows, is a round trip worth taking.

TheTweak’s Verdict 

DayFrame is a real, on-paper interesting idea: a “modular, tile-based productivity hub” that will reanimate one of Microsoft’s most popular and underutilized design tenets and focus it on one of the least good markets in history. 

The Live Tiles sidebar, the modular design and the promise of customization all indicate that someone is aware of the reason people have been looking for this design language in the first place.

However, at present, DayFrame is a promise, not a product. This is because there is no pre alpha, no public roadmap, and no forecast on when or if it will be released, there is nothing to test, review or recommend. 

DayFrame is one to keep an eye on and bookmark for Windows Phone fans, and for Windows geeks who haven’t had their fill of Outlook’s bulk, until such an iteration does arrive. This will be monitored.