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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\nA bit of a pain. Especially when driving. The controls to navigate the File Explorer (while fine in most other circumstances) are small and fiddly. And with some of the podcasts being quite short (like the daily CNET News podcast<\/a> which is typically 5 – 10 minutes long), this means you have to do this again 10 minutes into your car journey! <\/p>\n Created in Visual Studio, the code essentially wrote itself. The whole thing took about half-an-hour (most of which was spent finding images to The code looks like this: This starts Windows Media Player to play the selected podcast. Media Player, being the most recently started application, then fills the screen. (The ability to launch minimised applications, although possible in .NET, is not included in the .NET Compact Framework you get on Windows Mobile).<\/p>\n I did consider playing the mp3s within my launcher application itself, without using Media Player. This can be done like this:<\/p>\n I decided against this because I like the controls (pause, volume control etc.) that I get with the full Media Player (especially with the Voice Command skin<\/a> I use), and saw no point in re-implementing them in my launcher. If nothing else, it would’ve taken up space I’d rather use making my buttons as big as possible. Once a podcast has finished I can close the Media Player easily enough, returning me back to the launcher to start another. <\/p>\n And that’s it. <\/p>\n I’m not claiming that the Windows Mobile interface is bad, or that my approach is better – that’s not the point that I’m trying to make. The point is that it’s better for my needs. And if, after trying it on the way to work tomorrow I find that it’s not quite right, I can change it until it is. This is very cool – I can tweak and hack my phone until it is the device I want. <\/p>\n![\"podcastlauncher](\"post-images\/070118-podcast_launcher.gif\")
So, I decided to put together something more appropriate for my needs. A simple interface to launch the different podcasts – with buttons big enough I can quickly jab them with a finger. <\/p>\nsteal<\/strike> borrow for the buttons!). I drag – and – dropped the images to where I wanted them, then double-clicked on each one to create a method to be called when they are clicked on. I then filled each in those methods with a call to my launchPlaylist method.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nprivate void launchPlaylist(String path)\r\n{\r\n ProcessStartInfo mediaPlayer \r\n = new ProcessStartInfo(\"wmplayer.exe\", \r\n \"\\\"\" + path + \"\\\"\");\r\n Process.Start(mediaPlayer);\r\n}\r\n\r\n\/* one of these methods (below) for each button *\/\r\nprivate void btnCNET_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)\r\n{\r\n \/* where CNET is a string containing the playlist path *\/\r\n launchPlaylist(CNET);\r\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\/* need to add a reference to the media player dll in Visual Studio *\/\r\nWMPLib.WindowsMediaPlayer wmplayer = new WMPLib.WindowsMediaPlayer();\r\nwmplayer.URL = CNET;\r\nwmplayer.settings.volume = 100;\r\nwmplayer.controls.play();<\/code><\/pre>\n