Collaboration Idea: A Decent Interface for MCE

Ignorance · **2nd May 2006, 10:44 AM**

Everyone complains about the add-in interface for MCE. It's ugly, let's admit it. So, how about we take arkay's idea for a colaborative effort - and build an MCE interface that isn't quite so bad?

Although I love the Flash idea, I only have Flash 3, which wasn't really great for high-level scripting. I'm sure not everybody has it, so let's focus on an interface that everyone can work on - bite the bullet and get a nice-looking JScript interface working.

I'm quite happy to put in the stylesheets and images from BounceParse/NowShowing (and there is of course already the code and images from Microsoft), so let's give it a go - making an open-source interface for Media Center applications that doesn't suck quite as badly as most of them do

FOR THE FUTIRE: Who's up for building a method to install addons from the Media Center interface? I think it can be done with silent installers (and some cooperative installation programs). Let's face it - wouldn't it be cool to be able to browse a list of plugins and install the ones that sound good WITHOUT needing to leave MediaCenter?

davidgol · **2nd May 2006, 11:49 AM**

hmm.. someone actually built an interface to allow plugins to be easily built and integrated into MCE (can't remember the name of his architecture! - anyone remember it?). He was, while it was in beta, approached by MS and asked not to do this, as they were concentrating on one for Vista, and anything he built would be ultimately difficult to support going forwards. He complied very quickly (I don't know the ins and outs) and took it offline.

Whilst I like the idea of a DECENT set of templates (not what you get in the SDK) for MCE05, the plugin architecture of MCEVista is going to be the 'way to go', and anything that is built now will probably not integrate well and not be easy to support come Vista.

arkay · **2nd May 2006, 11:56 AM**

It's a tough one. I like the idea but with Vista just around the corner I hate the thought that it might be done for naught at the end of the day?

When MS move the goalposts they tend to move along way away. What would be really nice is if they had an SDK available for Vista NOW. After all this is when things should be being developed....

Cheers,

Arkay.

philzgr8 · **2nd May 2006, 12:46 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidgol

hmm.. someone actually built an interface to allow plugins to be easily built and integrated into MCE (can't remember the name of his architecture! - anyone remember it?). He was, while it was in beta, approached by MS and asked not to do this, as they were concentrating on one for Vista, and anything he built would be ultimately difficult to support going forwards. He complied very quickly (I don't know the ins and outs) and took it offline.

I'm pretty sure I recall the events you refer to although not the exact specifics. From my recollection it involved the publication of some proprietary Microsoft code and while MS made the request very nicely I believe they were holding one hell of a big stick behind their backs. As such the project vanished overnight.

davidgol · **2nd May 2006, 01:09 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by arkay

What would be really nice is if they had an SDK available for Vista NOW.

Ask and ye shal receive:

http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/P...bdc2bf43c.aspx

The Vista MCE SDK beta is being released a few days after each new Vista beta release. Nice! MCML, examples, integrated preview tools, it's all there.

I'd say if you have a new MCE plugin you want to develop, and you are only planning on releasing it around vista timeframe - then it's the way to go!

arkay · **2nd May 2006, 01:27 PM**

Now that is very interesting.. So are we all members of the beta?

I haven't installed the latest build yet but I have to admit it sounds interesting. I figured getting into .net from VS 2005 onwards would be a good way to go too as 2003 seems a little depreciated now.

Cheers,

Arkay.

davidgol · **2nd May 2006, 05:06 PM**

agreed Arkay - vs2005 is the way to go. I'm planning (when time permits) to build up a Vista MCE virtual machine, complete with vs2005 and the Vista MCE SDK. From that point it should be quite straightforward to start developing..

Ignorance · **2nd May 2006, 06:31 PM**

Yeah, I'm an MSDN subscriber (which is where I got my Media Center Edition in the first place). I WANT to try out this Vista thing, but at the rate they are going it will be released some time late NEXT year, with around a tenth of the features it was supposed to have

VS2005 is great - but remember, until the first service pack comes out, you can NOT make MCE addins in .NET with it, since some idiot at Microsoft decided to ship VS2005 without the ability to compile .NET 1.1 applications. It'll do .NET 2, but those aren't compatible with Media Center Edition.

arkay · **2nd May 2006, 06:37 PM**

Yeah.. it's a bit of a stuff up... And we're just hobbyists.. Imagine how corporates are reacting. Particularly software houses.. What do you develop for? XP or Vista. XP is on the way out.. Vista "might" be on the way in... I'd hate to be them.

At any rate I'm not so interested in the web side of things... What I'd be interested in is a reliable way to write external applications that can then be interfaced to MCE. i.e. Interface components only are handled by MCE, but the grunt work can be handed off to applications outside of MCE, be processed and then report back into MCE..

Dunno how feasible the above is, I know next to nothing about developing for MCE.. But that's what I want to be able to do. That way anyone can write useful software and simply supply the 10 foot UI. No need for the actual grunt code to run within MCE as far as I can tell and it also frees us from the complexity if you can develop Windows apps (in whatever unrestricted language) and just somehow collect/present info to MCE.

Cheers,

Arkay.

Ignorance · **9th May 2006, 09:21 AM**

A LOT of applications already work this way. All you do is interface with external apps or (or MCE background applications) with an ActiveX control, meaning that the webpage you write is simply a graphical user interface - there isn't any need for serious power to appear in your GUI if you don't want it to.

The trick is making sure you launch the program in a way so it doesn't make MCE loose focus. Gotta be careful of that

I'm in the middle of writing a 10' interface for CloneDVD2. It can't do much (the buggers wrote the program in QT, which means I can't really get any info OUT of the interface!) but it will begin a disc cloning process in the backgroundn and notify you when it's done.

arkay · **9th May 2006, 05:49 PM**

Ignorance,

Nice

I'd be interested in seeing some of the MCE plugin code if you would be willing to share. Just so I can get a feel for how it works with the SDK.. I haven't even installed it as yet. Guess I should but I'm toying with the idea of installing the latest Visat build and SDK + VS2005 on my dev box to start looking that way.. There may be no point in the learning curve for 2005.

Cheers,

Arkay.

Ignorance · **9th May 2006, 09:11 PM**

Hehe - I'm kinda protective of my ActiveX components source code, since it DOES take quite some time to write. But it's really no major chore to make an ActiveX control with Visual Studio 6/2002/2005 - it's pretty much a one-click process if you use the MFC libraries.

OK - the MFC makes the installers huge - but it's so EASY!

Writing an ActiveX also has nothing to do with the Media Center SDK - the only reason you'd need that is to write the actual HTML code (unless you want things to run via a background addin - and to be honest, I haven't written one of those yet, although there are excellent tutorials).

But - there are THREE MAJOR POINTS when making an AcitveX control for use with scripting lanugages and the MCE web browser....

1) Make sure your class implements 'IsInvokeAllowed', make sure it returns TRUE rather than FALSE. Don't worry - it's a normal override. It only takes a couple of clicks, but DON'T FORGET IT, or your scripts won't be able to call member functions or access any variables!

2) Make sure that you create two registry keys when you install your control (or when registering them)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\<control guid>\Implemented Categories\{7DD95801-9882-11CF-9FA9-00AA006C42C4}

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\<control guid>\Implemented Categories\{7DD95801-9882-11CF-9FA9-00AA006C42C4}

for the exact format of the <control guid> section, just register your control and then search for it in the registry. You'll be able to copy it out of there and into your installer or application.

3) The thing that I occasionally forget, when setting up your installer, make SURE that you've told the installer to register the OCX controls (just click the file in the editor and change the 'Register' property to 'OCXSelfReg'.

If you ever need help whacking something together, I can help - but right now, I'm not quite up to releasing source-code to the world, even though there's not too much in it.

If you want to SEE the code in action, try http://www.push-a-button.com.au/down...BETA_1.0.5.msi - I use an ActiveX control to parse the PHP for me.