MCxAP - xAP-enable your Windows Media Centre PC !

[Stuart Booth <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a fun new xAPplication that I've called "MCxAP". If you
use
Windows XP Media Centre Edition, then this is for you. If you don't
run MCE it will do nothing for you I'm afraid. Pretty pictures of it
in action are available in a link a little further down in this
message.

It's definitely pre-beta, an alpha release if you like, as nobody else
but me has tried this out. It's definitely feature INcomplete, but it
does enough useful pretty stuff right now that I figured somebody else
might be interested in trying it also.

If you want xAP driven On-Screen Display (OSD) messages on your MCE
box, this is definitely for you. That's all it does at the moment
though!!

Have a look at the following link for some very pretty ;-) pictures!
I'll have to make something a bit more suitable later on maybe. A
feature list and mild documentation can also be found at:

<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=12>

The download (an installable package) is available from the following
page, and should be installed directly onto your MCE machine. I
haven't even tried installing it on a none MCE machine - I did say it
was pre-beta after all!

<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=4>

The schema to control it is based upon James' display schema but I've
added some extra bits to it to support the enhanced features possible
through MCE. These changes aren't documented yet (did I say this was
pre-beta? ;-) but the guts are as follows:

<http://www.mi4.biz/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=9>

A test message I used to produce one of the sample images from earlier
on goes thus and can be sent via xAPSend (on the same page as MCxAP)

xap-header
{
v=12
Hop=1
UID=FF123400
Class=Message.Display
Source=KCSoft.Send.Anya
}
Display.Text
{
Line1=New TV Episode Available
Line2=Battlestar Galactica 2x01 is available to download. Download now?
Duration=30
}
Display.Look
{
Image=http://www.tvtome.com/images/shows/23/5/57-16546-sm.jpg
Modal=Yes
}
Display.Buttons
{
Button1=Yes
Button2=No
}

You can probably see the pattern on how to adapt it to your own uses
if required. Buttons supported are OK, Cancel, Yes and No. A duration
of 0 results in a message that stays there until cancelled.

Next up is some integration with the likes of xAPSwitchboard etc,
along with some enhancements to AddIn itself.

S
--
Stuart Booth <stuart@xxxxxxx>
xAPFramework.NET - a xAP software development framework for .NET

http://www.xapautomation.org/ 
     http://www.xapframework.net/