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HTML Pages Not Designed for Windows Media Center

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Most HTML pages on the Web are not designed to support Windows Media Center's specialized user interaction; some of the functionality of these HTML pages may not be accessible by using a remote control, and the content may not be readable on a television display. Windows Media Center allows users to navigate to non-Windows Media Center HTML pages, but then displays a dialog box that warns the user that the target page is not designed for Windows Media Center.

Not Designed for Media Center

This dialog box offers the user the following options:

  • Cancel returns to the previous page.
  • View Later returns to the previous page but also places a shortcut to the page on the user's Windows desktop for later viewing in a Web browser. Windows Media Center uses the title of the destination page as the title of the shortcut.
  • View Now opens the page.
  • Don't show this dialog again prevents this dialog box from appearing on future visits to non-Windows Media Center HTML pages. Instead, the page will always be opened as though View Now had been selected.

The dialog box also has a timeout period; if the user does not respond to the dialog box in time, Windows Media Center automatically returns to the previous page.

To determine whether a page is designed for Windows Media Center, Windows Media Center checks the application script for a function called MediaCenter.IsMCEEnabled. If this function is present and returns true, the warning dialog box is not displayed. To avoid this warning, add the following code to each HTML page (or to a linked JScript file) in your application:

function IsMCEEnabled()
{
    return true;
}

While links to HTML pages not designed for Windows Media Center can be acceptable under some circumstances, you should not use links to executable files from pages in an HTML application, because they will cause security dialog boxes to appear. These dialog boxes make it difficult or impossible for the user to return to the main window.

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