Question

I am trying to build a windows phone live tile. I want some text on the tile that is the accent colour. What this means is that I need to draw some text on the tile that is transparent. I don’t seem to be able to write in the transparent colour.

I have a User Control which is 173 by 173 pixels which I save as a png file. I use this png as the image for the live tile. The transparent bits of the image come out in the current accent colour.

Any ideas how to write in the transparent colour in xaml?

Answer 1

This behaviour is to be expected. In your original question you are effectively saying “Write invisible text on top of the image”, and that’s what you’re getting (imagine writing in invisible ink on a photograph). You effectively need to do one of two things.

1) Figure out which pixels are part of the text you’re writing, and “remove” them from the image so the background colour shows through, or
2) Write text in the background colour ({StaticResource PhoneAccentBrush})

EDIT

You can probably achieve what you need using an Opacity Mask. Apologies for only providing that as a link as I haven’t done this myself.