This is a followup to my earlier post about the development experience for MCE plugins.
First, check out the “Media Center Markup Language Preview Tool” page in the CHM help file that’s included with the SDK. It gives a number of tips, the most helpful of which (and successful, I might add) is to launch McmlPad off to the side, using specific parameters that will force it to refresh when you make changes to any MCML files in a folder. This allows for essentially real-time debugging of layout issues. I wasn’t able to get the version hosted in MCE to work; only the standalone one.
I used this command to launch McmlPad, then moved it off to the side and left it open while I played with the MCML files in Visual Studio. Change the paths and assembly names as needed for your app.
C:\Windows\eHome\McmlPad.exe -load:file://C:/shared/projects/hulu/HuluMCE/Markup/Test.mcml -assemblyredirect:"C:\shared\projects\hulu\HuluMCE\bin\Debug" -markupredirect:"resx://HuluMCE/HuluMCE.Resources/,file://C:\shared\projects\hulu\HuluMCE\Markup\,.mcml" -size:1000,562 -folder:"C:\shared\projects\hulu\HuluMCE\Markup"
Enjoy.