Windows Media Center Sandbox - Windows Media Center SDK 5.3 Now Available

Monday, November 19, 2007

Windows Media Center SDK 5.3 Now Available

An updated version of the Windows Media Center Software Development Kit is now available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a43ea0b7-b85f-4612-aa08-3bf128c5873e&displaylang=en. This is the same link as before so no need to change your bookmarks. These links also persist in the navigation section at http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/.

Here is a list of what's new or changed with this release...

MCML Preview Tool Automation Model
An improved automation model allows a tools developer to load an MCML file, refresh the current view, and close or get the position and size of the current instance. New command-line switches specify a folder to watch and automatically refresh when any resource in the folder changes.

Changes to the MCML Preview Tool Launcher
The improved MCML Preview Tool Launcher takes advantage of the new MCML Preview Tool automation model and command-line switches.

Additional Documentation on Animations in MCML

Check out the new or improved documentation on these topics:

Working with Animations in MCML
Using Keyframes in Animation
Applying Interpolations to Keyframes
Setting the Weight on Interpolations
Playing Different Types of Animations in Response to Events

MCML Animation Explorer
MCML Animation Explorer is a new tool that helps developers learn animation in MCML. Instead of writing XML you can work with a bunch of knobs and switches in a graphical user interface and see the resulting MCML as well as the visuals in the MCML Preview Tool.

New Visual Studio Templates
The following templates have been added for C#:

The Windows Media Center Application – Background template creates a project for a Windows Media Center background application.
The Windows Media Center Application – Fundamental template creates a project that provides a basic framework for creating a Windows Media Center application.

Visual Studio 2008 Support
The application templates now work with Visual Studio 2008.

Deprecated Features
The following platform features have been deprecated with this release:

Hosting for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) browser applications (XBAPs).
The Triple-tap / Soft-keyboard ActiveX control for hosted HTML applications.
Support for using alternative shells to run and host HTML applications.

Categories: SDK | Comments [12] |

| Posted on Monday, November 19, 2007 11:52:28 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007 3:12:10 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Why is XBAP hosting suddendly deprecated?

xelos

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 5:05:24 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Certainly some more info on the XBAP deprecation would be appreciated. The obvious reason is the whole XBAP idea is being replaced with Silverlight, nevertheless it shows a lack of faith in WPF. (Making the Zune application based on Media Center instead of WPF would be another example.)

colin

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 9:50:48 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Animation Explorer isn't localized properly. The decimal separator is taken from Vista current international settings and used as-is for the float values like CenterPointPercent. So you may get something like CenterPointPercent="0,50,0,50,0,50" in the generated mcml.

some name

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 3:13:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Like the rest of the SDK, MCML Animation Explorer is localized for one language: EN-US.

Charlie Owen

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 10:08:40 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Yea, more info on XBAP / Silverlight support would really help.

Richard Sparrow

Thursday, November 22, 2007 9:25:29 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

"Like the rest of the SDK, MCML Animation Explorer is localized for one language: EN-US"
I do not think I can agree with that. If it was true, it would always use "." as decimal separator (right behaviour) instead of taking the separator from the current locale (bug).

some name

Thursday, November 22, 2007 3:38:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Perhaps a better way of saying this is the SDK is developed and tested with EN-US regional settings only. It may or may not work as expected with other regional settings. That said, I'll take a specific look at what we can do to resolve this issue in a future version. If there are other international / localization issues please let me know.

Charlie Owen

Thursday, November 22, 2007 5:17:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Thanks, all other tools of the SDK are working ok for me (for the german locale). Although there is an issue in the media center itself - you cannot enter symbols "@" and some other like € using the TypingHandler. If you want I could give you more information and also report some other bugs I found in other areas during this year. Is there any official way to report bugs? :)

some name

Tuesday, December 04, 2007 7:00:23 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

What's wrong with wildcard mappings? They are scoped by application and with .NET 2+/IIS6 they keep the performance impact as low as possible.

wow gold

Tuesday, December 04, 2007 1:31:29 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

very nice

outdoor nativity scene

Wednesday, January 02, 2008 8:25:14 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

What do you mean by support for "alternative shells"?

Nathan

Friday, January 18, 2008 2:08:31 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Hi,

can anybody tell me, why the the "Triple-tap / Soft-keyboard ActiveX control for hosted HTML applications" is deprecated? Does the user has to have a remote keyboard? I wrote my own Triple-tap with jscript, but I was wondering why the Triple-Tap was removed from the SDK

Christian

Comments are closed.