There are two distinct “new” display control panels developed prior to the Longhorn reset. The first appeared in Milestone 3, and was removed in early Milestone 4. The second was present only in build 4093. Though both are created in the Avalon UI framework, it seems almost certain that the two efforts were not connected beyond their functionality and underlying technology.
Milestone 3 In build 3683, it is accessible out-of-the-box by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Properties from the right click menu, as one would with any previous version of Windows.
The “My TV and Movies” library becomes visible when using the Media Center Edition (“Freestyle”) variant of some Longhorn builds. The “My TV and Movies” library is a media application for recording and watching TV. The application is an Avalon container and is opened in Internet Explorer by the Avalon Shell Handler. The container itself includes a couple of dll and BAML files as well as a manifest.
In some builds the filesize is noticeably bigger because it includes placeholder images.
In this post I will have a look at how one can unlock the “full potential” of the wizard - to lift a corner of the veil: it doesn’t have a lot of potential. If you can vaguely remember me writing about exactly this subject a few years back… you are right, but with the switch to the WordPress powered website I totally forgot to place the original article back so here I am revisiting the subject C:
The Longhorn Start page is a feature present in Milestone 3 and early Milestone 4 builds. The start page appears to be an early attempt at replacing the OOBE (Out-Of-Box Experience) that these builds carry over from Windows XP.
Structure The code relating to the start page is split across two shell libraries. The bulk of the code is in Microsoft.Windows.Client.dll. The code in here is self-contained with no external dependencies, and covers the Avalon UI and its supporting code and the code required to load the data for it.
The RMA test tile already caused some discussion in the past and nobody has since figured out what it’s purpose is. This hidden tile for the sidebar in builds 4008 and up has no obvious functionality other than taking up space. In this article we will dive into the real meaning and function of the RMA test tile.
If you were still wondering how to enable this tile in the first place, it’s quite simple.