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So, why is tile bad? Ceramic tile is hard, very hard. On the Mohs scale of hardness, glass is around a 5.5. Porcelain and ceramics range from 7 to 9, meaning they'll scratch deep into the glass.


On a molecular level, even perfectly smooth tile will have microscopic sharp peaks and bumps. When glass contacts these surface defects, those edges stay perfectly still. Even small forces (such as resting the weight of the panel on it) will be magnified into huge pressures, and these pressures will locally deform the glass.


When the glass deforms in this way, there is a very high probability that the internal balance of stresses is disturbed. As mentioned before, this will nearly instantly result in catastrophic shattering of the entire pane.