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Service Task Panes

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[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

In Windows Media Player 10, online store providers can configure Windows Media Player to display as many as three task panes, called service task panes. Each service task pane is represented by a customizable button that Windows Media Player displays on the right side of the Features taskbar.

Each service task pane hosts a webpage that is the user interface for a particular online store feature.The appearance of the service task panes is defined by the ServiceInfo XML document. In this document, the service task panes are represented by three elements: ServiceTask1, ServiceTask2, and ServiceTask3. These service task panes are intended to provide the following:

  • A music service.
  • A video service.
  • A radio service.

You can position these features in Windows Media Player in any order you like, but ServiceTask1 must be the primary task pane for engaging in commercial activity.

The webpage hosted in each service task pane has access to the External object. This object provides methods, properties, and an event that provide special functionality for webpages in Windows Media Player. For instance, you can use the event and properties from External to make the appearance of your webpage match the color scheme that the user has chosen for Windows Media Player.

In Windows Media Player 11, there are no service task panes. Instead, there is a single Online Stores tab, which hosts the main webpage for the active online store. In the ServiceInfo document, the Online Stores tab is represented by the ServiceTask1 element; the ServiceTask2 and ServiceTask3 elements are ignored.

About Type 2 Online Stores

External Object for Type 2 Online Stores

ServiceInfo Document for a Type 2 Online Store