User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Rimas — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:37:19 GMT

I filed this suggestion to Connect: connect.microsoft.com/.../allow-defining-jump-list-items-in-a-separate-file-referenced-by-a-link-element

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Rimas — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:50:07 GMT

By the way, how is <meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="someURL"> semantically different from <link rel="home" href="someURL" > ? Why not use the element that is already in the standard?

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Rimas — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:43:43 GMT

When I saw this news, I was really enthusiastic about pinning. But after reading the comments, I'm no longer. While it's nice that all the jumplist items can be specified on home page only, I fail to see how using a <link> element instead, as suggested by comments here, would be inferior. I believe that <link> is indeed the right way to go.

Also, it would be really nice if IE would stop supporting only ICO files for icons. While this format holds the advantage of being able to hold more than one image resource in the same file, I don't see a reason why everyone should be forced to use it.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Clue — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:10:45 GMT

@Meta: No, META tags were designed to contain META information about documents. I think you're confused that later on, the HTTP-EQUIV meta tag was created, which, given its name, is obviously a meta tag designed to be used as a HTTP header equivalent. Since Microsoft isn't using HTTP-EQUIV as the name of the tag, they're not saying this is not equivalent to a HTTP header and thus it's only supported as a META tag.

@StepBack: I don't think you know what the word "spam" means. If a site itself cannot opt-in to something, and opting-in requires the USER to do something (which is easily reversed by that same user) then it's not possible to "spam" the system.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Meta — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:23:21 GMT

META tags were initially designed as a fallback for HTTP headers. Does the new meta values also work as HTTP headers ?

Do they also work for local files (file:/// or HTA)? This could be useful for TiddlyWiki.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Step back — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:17:31 GMT

We had spam links in the Start menu (installed by applications) and the desktop. We now get them in the task bar too. The Amazon menu is a particularly good example. IE9 designers, I thought following the IE9 blog that you had understood that you can't trust web/desktop developers. This is a step back.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Israelh [MSFT] — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:01:36 GMT

@CvP Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely take it into consideration.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Israelh [MSFT] — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:59:28 GMT

One way to avoid having multiple meta elements on each page is to only define the startURL meta element in all of your webpages. The webpage that the startURL points to will have all of the other meta elements that define the Pinned Site integration experience. In addition, this pattern allows sites to standardize the user experience with a consistent start. This should take care of the meta element duplication that was identified. Facebook is following this approach today.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Riasat — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 23:43:14 GMT

@Israelh Thanks. I was talking about custom category in jumplist.

The problem was in taskbar configuration. I had it configured to show only 5.

The default is 10 it seems.

Is there any chance allowing more than one custom category?

Having 10 items together doesn't really look good. If I could break them in to 2 parts, 5 in each, it'd look better.

also, that way, similar things can be grouped.

re: User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites

Israelh [MSFT] — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:47:53 GMT

@CvP We only support up to 5 Tasks on a Jump List. Not sure if that is what you're seeing. However, we do support up to 20 Jump List items on a Custom Category in the JumpList. The taskbar ultimately controls the number of Jump List items you are able to see. In addition, the Customize Start Menu dialog provides some defaults for the max number of items you're able to see on a Jump List (i.e. Number of recent items to display in Jump Lists).