Home

Don't get me wrong, I'm still extremely happy with my Zune, and the software it comes with. Heck, the XNA 3.0 CTP was released this week, and now I have games on my Zune. Yay! (Although most games I tried still crash.. I guess that's what you get for using experimental software).

 

There's just one minor detail about the recently released version 2.5 of the Zune software... it includes the "Now Playing" feature for Messenger. Yeah, great work boys! Obviously my whole Zune project has suffered a bit of a setback, and to be honest, now that they added the feature, it has obviously become less of a priority for me to finish my own stuff... I do have other stuff to do!

 

Ah well, it was great while it lasted. I might release it some day, or I might release the source in a few days. We'll see.

 

(Appologies for the lack of links to the CTP, previous blog posts and what not, but I'm too lazy right now to add them.)

1. A programmer with a soldering iron;

2. A manager who codes;

3. A user who gets "ideas".

 

The last few weeks I have noticed I have signed up for a few additional Web 2.0 services, such as Digg, Last.fm, Live Mesh, and stuff. Not that I really use them, or want to use them.. But most sites require their visitors to sign up in order to post comments (whatever happened to post as an anonymous coward?)

 

I still vehemently refuse to use Twitter though. I'm afraid the world might end up a little less sane if I do.

 

The Zune stuff is coming along nicely. I'm adding Last.fm support today, which should be a cool addition. I'll add some more options for the Now Playing add-in, and then I'm ready to build the actual installer. It should be interesting to try and build it using Zune's own UI framework, which might result in a purdy application!

The Zune software is cool. It looks sleak, works great. There is just one drawback: It doesn't implement the Now Playing feature for Windows Live Messenger. Of course, a well-motivated geek doesn't just give up. Instead, I've created what I call "Zune Add-Ins". A few lines of magic in the Zune resources has allowed me to pretty much implement, touch, iterate over, and what not, every object in the Zune software.

 

Très cool. So how does this all work you ask? The Zune software implements what is called Iris -- A UI framework based on MCML. Iris adds several improvements over MCML, including the ability to run scripts.. And the best thing is, Iris is written entirely in .NET! So, the first step was to let the Zune software load my own DLL. This was reasonably straightforward by adding a new Script tag, and adding a reference to the DLL as a namespace. The second part was adding a small "Add-Ins" link next to the settings link/button in the top-right corner. When clicked, it launches a new dialog.. And this is where the real magic kicks in.

 

Intead of putting the whole dialog in the ZuneResources DLL, isntead I opted to one-time import my own XML file containing IML (Iris Markup Language). From this XML file I can create, manage, etc., the settings dialogs for Add-Ins, by letting Add-Ins give me the path to their own XML file. This way, you can actually create neat little Zune dialogs for your Add-In settings.

 

The Add-Ins themselves simply reference a special .NET library which contains an IZuneAddIn interface, and are stored in the /AddIns/ folder. My code simply walks over all the DLL files in that folder, dynamically loads them and checks if there are any classes implementing the special interface. If so.. Voila! Your Add-In has been sucked into the Zune software. Cool!

 

Either way, here is the result so far:

 

I'll work on it a bit more, and then release it for BETA. This will probably be sometime next week.

... and still no way to filter on drafts -- posted december 2006!