Mysterious Microsoft Iris UI Framework “UIX” behind the new Zune software eye- candy. Whilst the previous Zune software was something like a Windows Media Player experiment turned Frankenstein, the new Zune software is something worthy of exploring. Whether or not you agree with Tim Gideon from PC Magazine, “Microsoft’s answer to i. Tunes. It has several names, simply “UIX” or the “Microsoft Iris UI Framework”. ![]() ![]() How do I know this? The most obvious clues are the framework library files in your Zune directory. They are UIX. dll, UIXrender. UIXsup. dll – Microsoft Iris UI Framework, Rendering engine and UIX Debugging Support respectively. On the same note, the product name of all of these files is “Microsoft Zune- Media. Center Platform” which helps a little later. Looking a little deeper, all of the presentation markup files are actually embedded in a resource file called Zune. Shell. Resources. ![]() In here we find each component of the UI defined in a separate . UIX file. There are literally hundreds of these. For example there is a “About. Dialog. UIX”, “Button. ![]() ![]() ![]() UIX”, “Gallery. View. UIX” and “Tooltip. UIX”. The UIX markup language is distinctively XML- based. Here is a snippet from “About. Dialog. UIX”. After a little more researching together with the reference to Media Center before, it appears UIX is an extension to Media Center Markup Language (MCML), the presentation markup language used in Windows Media Center to third- party developers. In particular they share a lot of the same namespaces, for example “UI” and “Dock. Layout”. However they are not identical besides UIX being a 2. ![]() ![]() Download Microsoft Zune Desktop Theme for Windows XP. Today in this topic we are going to share an exclusive and official theme for Windows XP released by Microsoft. From Microsoft: Zune Marketplace is the entertainment superstore that never closes where you can browse music, movies, videos, and podcasts whenever you like, with. Zune software is a digital media jukebox that puts your favorite music, videos, and pictures at your fingertips. Use Zune software to find great music on Zune Music. Zune was a brand of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft. Zune included a line of portable media players, digital media player software for. From Microsoft: Zune Marketplace is the entertainment superstore that never closes. Browse music, movies, videos, and podcasts whenever you like, with brand-new. Zune software is the ideal place for interacting with music and also to experience entertaining times. This cool designed software released by the Microsoft. Whilst the previous Zune software was something like a Windows Media Player experiment turned Frankenstein, the new Zune software is something worthy of exploring. Building your games with DirectX, Unity, or Cocos? Take your game development to the next level with Visual Studio IDE. Download for free today. MCML is 2. 00. 6. The biggest difference in UIX is the inclusion of scripting logic. For example here is a snippet from “Scrollbar. UIX”. Here they are defining some of the very simple logic behind a scrollbar. This also gives the impression UIX is a very low- level framework as simple controls like buttons, checkboxes and scrollbars are all user- defined and not built- in to the framework itself. The advantage being they can really fine- tune exactly how controls function as they intend it to. Explains why the buttons in the Zune software looks so good. Together, they can pretty much mimic most if not all of the common user interface available in Windows with UIX. Rendering wise, I don’t have a lot of understanding on how UIX renders its outputs, but in the rendering engine DLL it makes references to Direct. X9 functions which makes me want to believe this is 3. D- accelerated renderer, which might explain why the animations and transitions run so smooth. Whilst all of this is all well and interesting, the thing that really captures my attention is why they would invest so much time into developing this framework and implementing it just for his software when they have plenty of alternatives like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to work with. I can’t stop wondering if this is going to become a new framework offering by Microsoft for all developers to use. Or maybe the foundations for the next version of Windows Media Center! In any case, now if anyone ever asks “gee, I wonder what the Zune software is designed with”, they’re not left out in the cold.
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