Instructions on how to make personal changes to Chocolate theme

[RonNCmale 3]

Is it possible to make changes to the chocolate theme in windows media browser classic for personal taste? example: to increase the size of the area for the overview in the detail page.

 

Is there some suggested reading? sites? to get me started!!!

 

I read the following programs were needed to make a theme, but I'm not looking to make a theme, just to learn from one already made.

• Microsoft Visual Studio (Express C# will work but you can’t debug so I recommend the real copy)
• Microsoft Windows SDK
• Microsoft Media Center SDK
• Mercurial source control (tortoisehg is probably the easiest)

When you feel ready to start your theme you need to get the Visual Studio Project Template for MediaBrowser Themes and install it. That can be obtained from the root directory of the source code you brought down. It is called “MediaBrowser Theme.zip”. Just drop that into your templates directory for Visual Studio.

Now, when you go to create a new project, under Visual C#, you will see the option to create a “MediaBrowser Theme”. Select that, give your plug-in theme a name and get going.

 

The MediaBrowser Theme in new project in Visual Studio was not present. I'm evidently doing something wrong?

 

Thanks

 

 

[ebr 14927]

Those are old instructions for MB2.  Where did you find them?

 

You can pull down the source from Github and modify if you wish but you will need to keep up with changes as well or be left behind .

 

The overview area on the detail page in chocolate already covers a large percentage of the screen.  What, specifically, were you trying to accomplish?  Perhaps we can work it into the actual theme if it makes sense for everyone.

 

Or, if you just want to dabble and learn, feel free to tinker yourself.

[RonNCmale 3]

I did a search on the internet and found these instructions.

 

You did increase the size area in the detail page in chocolate already once, but it still does not show all the contents of some of my movie descriptions. Note: I love the chocolate theme with only the small annoyance of the detail page overview does not scroll.

I requested a scolling effect and you replied: " haven't been able to work out proper auto scrolling in that situation (plus, I'm not a fan of auto-scrolling in general). The workaround so far is to increase the size of the area for the overview but, in very long cases, that still doesn't fit.

 

I think maybe the scrolling effect if someone could make it work in the detail page would be the better solution instead of an increased area of the overview. There is where I thought maybe I could learn how to read/write/change the code. Hence the search for making themes.

[ebr 14927]

Okay.  I think I have 95% of cases covered right now so I'm not actively working on the scrolling.  You have to have a very long overview - which basically amounts to a synopsis of the entire plot for it to not fit.

 

If you want to try to figure out why the autoscroller is not working in that situation, have at it.  If you figure it out, you can submit a pull request.

[RonNCmale 3]

Thanks, any advise to help with the learning curve?

[ebr 14927]

Thanks, any advise to help with the learning curve?

 

I don't know where you are coming from as far as development experience but mcml is not easy to deal with due to lack of support of the current toolset.  You'd be better off with an old version of VS that has some intellisense in it.

[RonNCmale 3]

"You'd be better off with an old version of VS that has some intellisense in it?"  Any particular VS? 2005, 2008, 2010? Does it have to be pro? Can express work?

[ebr 14927]

Express will work, you just can't run the debugger - which doesn't really matter for themes because you can't run mcml through the debugger anyway.

 

VS 2008, I think, was the last one with built-in intellisense for mcml.  Yes, that's how long MS has been abandoning WMC development.

[RonNCmale 3]

wow