Hello all,

I'm hoping you could take a minute or two to test a Media Center add-in I'm working on. It's called HeatWave, and it's a fairly basic weather application.

You can download it from here:
http://www.mcextended.com/downloads/MCExtended.HeatWave.Setup.0.9f.exe

The interesting thing about it is that it uses Managed DirectX to present it's user interface, so it looks and performs more like Media Center than other add-ins you might have seen.

Unfortunately it won't work over extenders at this stage.

I welcome any feedback or bug reports you can give me.

Thanks in Advance,

James.

(UPDATE 01SEP06 - Changed to link to new version, changed title to reflect new version)

Could you give some screenshots, or a link to where we can see some?

David Wright

Screen shots as requested:

James

Thank you for the pics,  I'll be giving it a go tomorrow..  hopefully have some feedback for you then..

David Wright

Hi James,

another magic from you. It works great. Naturally I have some questions about it.

1. How is this done? Can you give us some more details?
2. Is there a chance to get it working on extenders?
3. Can the DX stats be switched off (in the beta)?

Hi,

The look and feel of this app is great.  It works really well.  I think you have summed it up when you said 'basic', but hopefully more features for it will come with time.

The only other thing is like frank said, the stats at the bottom are distracting and needless (as an end user anyway).

All in all though a great effort.

Hi James,

May I ask why development has continued on this?  Will it work with Vista?  Easily ported?  Not worried about Vista?

I know one of the reasons you stopped development before was because of Vista and ensuring compatibility, what's the story now?

Thanks!

Hello again Frank!

Glad you like it. As far as your questions go:

1) It's a HTML page that hosts a .NET WinForms control that is used a the presentation surface for a Direct X device. I've written my own UI classes, layout, and presentation engine from scratch to do this. It does all it needs to do by simply relying on the existing HTML add in features and object model. It does rely on the resources in some of the Media Center DLLs (sound and graphic files), simply because that gives the most 'integrated' look.

2) Yes, there is a chance. I have several approaches in mind, however will most likely start with a low-fidelity GDI-based renderer similar to the sort of extender experience you would be familiar with. It's a bit of work though.

3) The stats, as of this release, can't be switched off, no. I will ensure I include the ability in the next release. As an aside, if you want to make it even uglier, you can press the [F1] key and all the individual render elements will be outlined. It's kind of neat to see how things are composited on the screen.

James.

Hi Chris,

While this 'looks' like the old HeatWave, it has absolutely nothing in common with it technically.

The previous version relied on undocumented features in the various Media Center DLLs in order to work. Basically, Media Center 2005 had much of the foundation of MCML included within it, however it wasn't documented. It was also very much subject to change with each release of and update to Media Center.

This version is simply a standard HTML add in that hosts a, well, very complicated .NET WinForms control. The only cross-over, and therefore points of incompatibility with future updates to Media Center are if Microsoft breaks the current public API.

Because of my desire for an integrated look for this initial release, there is one other compatibility point that is by no means mandatory. At the moment I'm dynamically loading the images for the buttons, background, etc. from the original Media Center DLLs, so if these resources are renamed or dropped from future releases then there will be issues with the presentation. I could just as easilty have provided my own graphics and sounds, however I wanted the 'look' to be as close as possible.

I've had this add in running in the public beta of Vista without any apparent issues beyond the missing and renamed resources, so it seems that it will be fine.

So, why have I continued with this? It's not a question of continuing, it's a question of re-starting. For whatever reason, my inital approach last year was flawed. This one is fully compliant with all public APIs, and therefore should not present future issues.

Whether it's worth it with the release of Vista and it's MCML extention capabilities just around the corner is, however, dubious. I do take some pleasure in demonstrating that it's possible. I just wish I'd got around to it a couple of years ago...

James.

I am thrilled to see that you've re-started this project. Once again, your design is clean and attractive. I certainly hope that you keep up the good work and consider developing for Vista's MCE environment, too. A few points I've noticed:

The Media Center "waiting/processing" ring doesn't always go away when the weather screen appears.

While the icons are nice and sharp, the text is not sharp at higher resolutions (on one configuration, I'm running at 1600 x 1200).

When setting up my city, it asked me several times if I wanted to save the settings, even though I'd selected already Save.

Personally, I'd prefer "My Weather" or "Weather" on the start page--the MCE start page has always been straightforward English terms, devoid of branding.

I also wish that the app didn't, by default, install itself in the start page. The result is that I lose one of the two previously-installed apps on the start page.

Finally, I attempted to run this on my wireless display. I use a wireless SmartDisplay to display and control Media Center for music and other household functions in the kitchen. I doubt this is a use case that you'll worry about, since probably only about 1000 of these things ever sold, but I thought it was interesting that this does not work on this configuration, while your earlier (pre-rollup) version did.

I know...a lot of picking for something I'm supposedly so excited about. Well, I am excited, and I'm glad to see you're back at it. I hope you find the feedback useful.

rgunther:

Once again, your design is clean and attractive.

Thanks!

rgunther:

The Media Center "waiting/processing" ring doesn't always go away when the weather screen appears.

I'm looking in to how to resolve this. It appears at this stage to be some sort of issue with the MCE API itself - sometimes a SecurityException is being thrown because the callstack hasn't had the StrongNameIdentityPermission asserted on it. I don't have a good answer as to why it's intermittent at this stage.

rgunther:

While the icons are nice and sharp, the text is not sharp at higher resolutions (on one configuration, I'm running at 1600 x 1200).

Yeah... I know. It annoys me too. It's the routines my renderer is using to draw the fonts. This will ultimately be fixed, however not in the short term.

rgunther:

When setting up my city, it asked me several times if I wanted to save the settings, even though I'd selected already Save.

Personally, I'd prefer "My Weather" or "Weather" on the start page--the MCE start page has always been straightforward English terms, devoid of branding.

I also wish that the app didn't, by default, install itself in the start page. The result is that I lose one of the two previously-installed apps on the start page.

I'll fix all of these for the next release.

rgunther:

Finally, I attempted to run this on my wireless display...

This is... very annoying. At the moment it won't run on any sort of extender device I'm afraid. I need to implement a GDI based renderer (a fair bit of work) for this to happen. I hope to ultimately do so, however it's unlikely to appear in the short term.

rgunther:

I hope you find the feedback useful.

Sure is! Thanks very much for providing it!

James.

I notice you keep changing the Beta version...do you happen to have a changelog?

JuMz:

I notice you keep changing the Beta version...do you happen to have a changelog?

No, but I'll start keeping one from this point on. For this release it's easier to note what has stayed the same:

• The icon
• The setup screen banner image
• The name

All the rest is entirely new - it just happens to look pretty much the same from a user perspective.

Cheers,

James.

Sounds good. I'll give it a whirl over the weekend and will post back!

JuMz:

Sounds good. I'll give it a whirl over the weekend and will post back!

Hi,

I attempted to install it, the installer goes through, no errors but I do not see the extension in MCE. I have also chosen the "repair" option and still no luck...wierd...is there a log file I can look at?