OK - I've put an incomplete version of the book online at the Push-A-Button website - http://push-a-button.com/products/books/index.php You are welcome to download it and have a read. If you like it or find it valuable, PLEASE consider donating, since it takes quite a bit of time to write up a document like this. It's 150 pages long and goes ...

Look, I'm not always the best at really finishing things, partially because I'm trying to slot everything in around the normal work/eat/play/family thing AND still try to make some Media Center software at the same time. So I'm going to offer some alternatives here in a poll. Vote on what you think would work for you...    [NOTE: All ...

OK - people seem a little interested in the idea of a book, and ''Cheap PDF'' seems to be popular. Personally, I'm thinking the same route because it allows be to embed hyperlinks into the document - and the book is best used when you have Visual Studio available to play with right then and there, anyway. So then people have a few options. I'll ...

I'm working on a Media Center development book - would people be interested in buying a book on how to develop applications in Media Center? If so, what would be more appealing? A large bound volume, or an inexpensive PDF copy? I'm sitting on 130 pages at the moment, and I've only just covered where the blog is up to now, so there's a LOT of ...

Some people have had issues trying to make 'popup menus' in Media Center applications. Since I've been adding a similar function to EMUCenter to support some of the new features, I thought I'd cover how to do it. The answer is actually very straight-forward. The main problem with pop-up menus is the fact that they tend to pop-up over your ...

Microsoft are of the opinion that users of Media Center applications do not want 3rd party apps to look like or work like Media Center itself. This is at odds with 99% of the feedback I've ever recieved as a Media Center developer, but I quote Charlie Owen from MS - The pool of customers we listen to and try to satisfy is much larger than ...

Ok - many people still have some trouble visualising their interfaces when it comes to writing their MCML. They don't know where to start, or what to do. I'm going to take a page from an MCML application and show you how to 'de-construct' it to figure out how it's made. The basic trick is to imagine you are drawing the page with a vector graphics ...

  There is a bit of confusion out there about which rule to use in which situation when writing rules in your MCML application. I'll just quickly cover the scenarios here... Default vs Binding Rules To be honest, you can actually use a Binding rule as a Default rule fairly seamlessly, but it's not really required and adds an (admittedly ...

Hi everyone, some of you already know me from around the community, I'm the silent one who sits and makes the occasional stealth post now and then over at the Green Button. My nick name is Lindz, so don't be surprised if I sign emails with it sometimes :)  I am a Microsoft employee and technical enthusiast, I am involved in a program called ...

There are times when the response from a click is going to take a little while - fetching information from a web page, downloading a file, queuing a video...some of these things take time, and the user doesn't like to have their Media Center 'lock up' while they are waiting for it. When this happens, it's time to bring out the good old Thread ...