Big Screen Blog: MCPL

New Media Center Developer Tips/Tricks on Aaron Stebners Blog

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 08:16:22 GMT

Aaron Stebner (MSFT) posted a couple of really interesting posts this week relating to Media Center development that's worth a look.

The first post Mailbag: How can I create a loading page for an MCML Application? reveals a very cool trick you can do if you want splash/loading screens or "First Run" style sequences in your application - which involves inheriting a HistoryOrientatedPageSession class and overriding the LoadPage method. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while - and previously - you had to use different techniques to prevent the splash screen coming up for a second time (when you navigate backwards from the main menu). I am yet to try this out - but I suspect it may also allow for multiple sets of page histories to exist - so would be extremely useful for tracking Page Flows in Wizards independantly of the main application's history.

Another interesting post is How to NGEN files in an MSI-based setup package using WiX - which shows how to create 32/64 bit specific Native images for Wix installers. In his example - Aaron has started with his 'Q' Wix install script (supplied with the Media Center SDK) - and shown how it should be modified to support NGEN.exe (a tool supplied with the .Net v2 framework). From what I understand - this post could be quite useful if you are deploying seperate builds of your application for 32/64 bit (which is required for some Media Center related applications - ie ones that access the EPG/Scheduling related DLL's).

Go and check them out!

MCML Snippits : Vista MC Style Pivot Items/Buttons

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 06:59:19 GMT

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Unfortunately this post has been removed due to substantial and blatant abuses of copyright by other members of the community - and a complete unwillingness of those people to 'pay it forward'. (including but not limited to 'claiming of ownership/copyright by other prominent members of the community').

As per before - the code/sample previously found in this blog post / development article is (C)mobilewares.net and is strictly not to be directly used/stolen by other 3rd parties (commercial or not) - and was only ever made available for the purpose of teaching other developers how to better use/develop the platform. (and if you still have access to this code - this copyright is still in full force).

Note that freeware/shareware/donationware/prototypes and other distribution models (or 'usages') are not exempt from this copyright either (IP theft still equals IP theft - regardless of the 'price tag' attatched or 'availability').

If you have misused this original blog post/materials contained within - and are unsure how to rectify this situation - please contact me to discuss via the messaging system provided by this blog. (ie. honesty is the best policy - and I'm not planning to throw the book at someone who is reaching out and trying to do the right thing.)

MCML Snippits : Page Background Effects

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:57:18 GMT

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MCML Snippits : Vista MC Style Gel Button

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 13:04:57 GMT

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