Moving an item created with the MediaItemTester into the Community Bar

Once you have created an item that runs in the Media Item Tester, you should try it out in the Community Bar itself. Here is how to do it

We will show how this is done with the ItemTemplate distributed with the Media Item Tester. Recall that this appears as Item Template, as specified in the [SideItem.ItemName("Item Template")] directive at the beginning of the ItemTemplate class. If you have created your own dll with a different name, then the instructions will be similar although the names/paths will be different.

Copying your dll to the Community Bar

  1. Find the ItemTemplate.dll. This should be in MediaItemTester/bin/Debug/items/.
  2. Open the folder where Community Bar looks for its items. This is normally in C:/Program Files/Community Bar/items
  3. Copy the ItemTemplate.dll into the folder above

Testing the Community Bar on your local machine.

  1. Open the Community Bar Server. From the Start menu, select All Programs/GroupLab/Community Bar/Communty Bar Server
    • A dialog box will appear titled Dictionary Inspector.
  2. Start the server by opening a shared dictionary. Use the default tcp://localhost:test for now (it can be any port name)
    • The bottom of the window should now say tcp://localhost:test Opened, and on the right bottom it should say Monitoring.
  3. Start the Community Bar. From the Start menu, select All Programs/GroupLab/Community Bar/Communty Bar.
    • Fill in the personal details.
    • Set the Server Location to localhost
    • Set the Server Name to test
  4. Create a place. Hover over the Places label in the Bar, then click in the Places box that appears. You can rename it if you want; call it MyPlace then hit return. A list will appear in the hover box; check the place. A Place will be created, and two standard media items will be present in it (a Presence item and a chat box).
  5. Test your own media item. Hover over the MyPlace label in the Bar. You will see a window appear with all the transient views of the existing media items, as well as a menu at its left. Your own media item should be listed there (mine is there, and is called Item Tester).
  6. Create another Community Bar. You can, of course, do this on a different machine (where you put in the tcp address of the server). Or you can do it on the same machine by repeating the above instructions (we suggest you change your name/initial so you can simulate two different people). A 2nd community bar will be created. Drag it to the other side of the screen.