When it comes to displaying the progress of a long-running operation to the user, there are many options available to a GUI designer: Change the cursor to an hourglass Change the caption on the status bar Show an animated glyph on the window Show a dialog box A number of factors could affect which method… Continue reading
In many applications, the ability to dynamically load and execute third-party code (in the form of plug-ins) is highly desirable. Plug-ins can be used to provide: Alternative implementations of built-in features Completely new features (given some kind of framework on which they can be built) All functionality in the application (e.g. in a test harness,… Continue reading
Using WCF for IPC in Media Center Add-Ons Last time, I gave an overview of the design of my network browsing/copying add-on for Media Center. In this instalment, we look at how to use Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) as a means of interprocess communication (IPC) between the interactive and background portions of the add-on. Recall… Continue reading
In the last instalment, we looked at building a list control for Media Center. This introduced the ModelItem class, which is the basis for building the Model/View-Model in a Media Center application. With a reasonable amount of MCML now under my belt, I am shifting focus to the add-in itself. This article is designed to… Continue reading
Explains how to host preview handlers (COM interface IPreviewHandler) that implement neither IInitializeWithFile or IInitializeWithStream in Windows Forms, by importing the IInitializeWithItem interface from COM. Details how to obtain IShellItem objects for files and how to pass them to the preview handlers. Continue reading