The Media Center Sandbox

How do you get stuff on the left hand side of the start menu strip. Did Yougle used to have something on the left? Sort of like the settings or is it tasks item?

OK - the your strips are ordered in OLDEST TO NEWEST ENTRY POINT according to their timestamp value.

You'll need to use RegEdit to see what I'm talking about. In the registry key...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Entry Points

You'll find the Entry Points you've registered for your application. Each one has a DWORD value that is called TimeStamp. This determines the 'age' of your entry point, based on when it was registered with RegisterMCEApp.

Give the entry point you want to be first on the strip the LOWEST timestamp, and go upwards as you want them to go to the right.

The opposite is true of Start menu items. In this case, only the two NEWEST are shown. Please don't put something like 99999999 in there to make sure you always win - that's just rude.

 

The only problem is that you cannot yet specify the order of your items in your registration.XML file. So if you want to set a specific order for your items, you are going to have to tweak the registry settings as part of the installation of your product. This may mean you have to produce seperate 32 and 64 bit installations for your program.

Oh, the new addin I'm toying with developing as an open source tool with the other people on this forum - Addinistrator - is designed to get around this problem by giving you an API you can call to change your order. Even better, it should allow you to change the content of your Start menu at RUNTIME.

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100 downloads a day for Yougle Vista - goin' allright!

Check out http://www.thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/Blogs/developer/default.aspx and http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce

Thanks for the reply. I've got my strip order in the order I want it using timestamps (thanks for that), however, I can't seem to get something on the left of the default tile. Like when you go to tasks, the shutdown is the currently selected tile, and settings is to the left of it.

I'm sure I saw this on an earlier version of Yougle, but the latest one doesn't seem to do this? Confused?

Um...nope. The default focus is always on the leftmost item, I think. If I DID get yougle to do something else, I'm actually kinda shocked :)

At one point I did tinker with a few things. If this DID happen, all I can suggest is perhaps you should try REGISTERING your items in a the FOCUS order (eg. the item you want to get the focus first should be first in the .XML file) but have your timestamps in a different order.

But to be honest, I don't think this is a good idea, really. Just keep the default item as the first in the list. I actually don't really like the 'settings on the left hand side' thing, but that's simply an asthetic thing and my own opinion.

Anyway, if you do have some luck with it, please get in touch and let us all know!

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100 downloads a day for Yougle Vista - goin' allright!

Check out http://www.thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/Blogs/developer/default.aspx and http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce