The Menu Bar
At the top of your Media Center interface screen,
you’ll now see the menu bar and its six control
options (some of these are shown in the close-up
in Figure 5.3). From left to right, you’ll find the
following:
■ The green Media Center Start button. It takes
you back to the main Media Center interface
from wherever you may have wandered
within Media Center.
■ The green Back arrow button. It returns you
to the screen you were viewing immediately
before the one you are viewing now.
■ The blue Help button. This opens a Media
Center Help window to find answers to
common questions.
■ Minimize. A Windows standby, it will reduce
your Media Center session to an icon on the
taskbar. Although this gets Media Center out of your way in a hurry, your
Media Center session remains active. Thus, if you are playing a show or a
tune, you’ll continue to hear it on your speakers after you minimize Media
Center.
■ Restore. This switches Media Center into “Windowed mode,” meaning that it
shrinks Media Center down from full-screen view to a smaller window, allow-
ing you to access your other desktop applications while continuing to enjoy
your Media Center content in a compact size. It also automatically places a
resize handle in the lower-right corner of the Media Center screen (see the
close-up in Figure 5.4). You can drag that handle to make the Media Center
screen as large or as small as you like. When you want to return Media
Center to its full-screen appearance, just click on the Restore button again.
■ Close. This shuts down Media Center completely—but don’t worry, it will con-
tinue recording any scheduled shows in the background. (You need not be
present to win!) For more information on recording TV, turn to the Chapter 7
section called “Using the Program Guide.”
CHAPTER 5 NAVIGATING XP MEDIA CENTER’S “2-FOOT” INTERFACE
69
Notice that when you
resize the Media Center
window, it retains its original
dimensions. You can make it big-
ger or smaller, but you can’t
stretch it into a different shape. In
techie terms, we say that it main-
tains a “constant aspect ratio.”