The Media Center Sandbox

Hi!

I have been doing C# for many years now, but it was only until recently that I decided to teach myself MCML properly. I have set up the environment, checked at all samples and am reading through the programming guide. I have started to write some simple programs that do work... but now I want to try something more complicated. I want to mimic the DVD library in Vista Media Center, I figured this will be quite a challenge... ;) I have some movie data in dummy xml documents...

1) How on earth do I handle localization? When I design standard ASP.NET and Winforms Apps with Visual Studio I use the resource editor, and then check the current UI Culture on the main thread. And then I have different resource (resx) files based on the culture, one for en-US, one for sv-SE etc etc. But I don't see this kind of support when working with MCML. How should this be handled? If I have a basic static text (like a label in asp,net) and I want that to change based on what UI Language the user has set. How do I do?

2) Please check the below screenshot

http://aug21.imghost.us/PaNb.jpg

   1) This text, is it just a static text or is it rendered with transparency? How can I know which font and size they have used? Is there some kind of standard base I can derive from to get the native Media Center appearance? It almost looks as if there is a gradient applied on the text...

  2) This is an interesting feature. Is it simply a scrolling textbox? It looks very similar to AdvancedMarkup.Scrolling.StaticContent in the example code.  And what about these up and down buttons? Do they exist somewhere? Or do I have to design them all by myself? Is it simply an image button of some sort? The chevrons look really cool and very useful when you have to scroll...

  3) The transparent background, how can I do this? I dont want a static background image (like I have now) but rather the animation that exist as standard in Vista Media Center. I have not been able to find a good property for this... yet.

Lots of stupid questions as you can see, but I have not been able to find answers for this on this forum or in the somewhat thin SDK documentation.

Kind regards

Steven

1) Localization - slightly more difficult than normal. You can still load strings from resources, or you can convert every piece of text in your application to a property and load them all from some sort of 'localisation' class. But other devs may have helpful hints, since I don't bother too much with localisation

2) Yes - it's simply blue text with transparency. But you can add gradient fades to an object using a Clip object, if you really want (eg. take a look at the text in the top right corner of most Media Center screens)

"Do these exist anywhere" - Haha - have you seen ANY Media Center component that has already been made for you ? But these could be very simple graphic objects, or even text objects from a symbolic font. They would work by calling member functions on the Scroller - most likely, the Scroll function.

3) No. MCML application can not get access to the animating background. I don't know why.

You can create your own animated background - I think that Niall posted an example on his blog some time ago (mobilewares.spaces.live.com) but I can't find a search feature to look it up quickly to give you a URL.

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi!

I am very grateful for your help. My own dvd library is starting to become more and more functional due to many long hours of coding... But the design experience is far from what you would call user friendly... And for some reasons System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine() doesn't work from my Model classes... even though I made a setup like I normally do.  Anyway:

1) Is there any kind of website/white paper/forum thread etc that describes what fonts, sizes, colors the native media center interface consist of? Difficult to guess... :) And I really like that interface.

Edit: I managed to find this info by spending lots of time googling...

Fonts: FONTS.MCML seems to contain the font sizes
FONTNAMES.MCML seems to contain the font families. Those are located in Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll

2) yes I was also wondering about this text, it looks really nice. I will try and play with the clip object bu chances are I will never make it look that good.

Edit: Found description on how to do this at this website: http://mediacenterdev.blogspot.com/2007_01_28_archive.html I wonder who the autor is ;)

3) Actually I haven't seen that. Except for the API calls you make to the Media Center messagebox... that one looks the same as the original one. I kind of expected you could to the same for buttons etc... I guess I can't...

About the animating background. One thing that makes me confused is that the DVD Gallery displayes (like on my picture) the animating background. And isn't this a standard MCML application? What kind of magic ahve they used in order to show this? I figured this was always in teh background (like teh windows desktop) and if you wanted to see it you simply enabled some transparency flag... sadly that doesn't seem to be the case. Without a background similar to that one I will never get it quite right.... hmm.

Edit: it seems as if everyone is using this www.xpmediacentre.com.au/editor/6000.png static picture as the background, when I look at various screenshots for example:

http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce/vista/emucenter/Screenies.jpg (I wonder who made this also hehe. I don't suppose you want to share these font settings you use?)

Kind regards

Steven

Hi!

Some updated questions:

2) I noticed in ehres.dll that all images used to compose the background are there. It looks like they use some kind of transparent animation to make it look the way it is. Is there anyone with artistic skills that want to attempt to do this?

2) On the webpage  http://mediacenterdev.blogspot.com/2007_01_28_archive.html 

There is a description that states how to make the top right header on all media center pages. I copy and pasted this code and it looks nothing like the one in media center (check dvd library) on my screenshots. Then I noticed a post has been made that suggested that Segoe Media Center Semibold should be used. This is WRONG! You should use Segoe Media Center Light instead!!!

Oh, I have a new question! Does anyone for sure know what kind of layout they use in the real dvd gallery? I use form layout and dock controls to parents and eachother, to allowfor screen resizing and proper scaling. Is this correct?

 kind regards

Hi!

I will answer myself here:

1) I have made a thorough search on google, and haven't found any project where someone has attempted to mimic the native media center background. The resources exist iin ehres.dd so if anyone has artistic skills (i haven't) it would be worth an shot.

2) I have tryed my form layout and it scales correctly without problems. Both on 4:3 and 16:9 so I guess it is fine, but as with everything in teh SDK, documentation is hideous.

kind regards

Steven