Windows 8.1 IE11 how to remove a live tile notification?

Question

I an configuring our site to support live tiles with notifications with IE11 and Windows 8.1. I have a browserconfig.xml file with polling-uri inside the notification section. I've discovered that if the polling-uri returns a 404 response code, then the corresponding notification is not shown in the tile.

The question is, once a notification is defined and showing using the notification XML file, how do I stop that notification from showing when the site is already pinned on the start screen?

There is an indication in the MSDN documentation that if I use the metadata approach instead of the XML file that I can specify "none" for the polling-uri to turn off that notification, but I'd much rather use the XML file approach.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

It appears that after a number of days of getting a 404 response code on the notification XML file that Windows 8.1 will finally give up and go back to just the tile image and text. See notes on the original post. I first pinned the site on Wednesday around 17:45 then turned off the notification XML file so that it returned a 404 response code. As of Sunday it was still showing the missing notification on the desktop. Monday at 8:45 it had reverted to the tile image.

Note: my Windows 8.1 is a Virtual Machine and does not run all the time. It's possible that Windows might give up on the missing notification sooner if it ran all the time.

Windows appears to look for the notification XML files when the user first logs in and whenever coming out of the screen saver.