Tech Strategy Trends » Jump Lists

WordPress Enables 20 Million Bloggers to Pin Sites in IE9

Tony Bradley — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:34:01 +0000

I have been a fan of Jump Lists since I started using Windows 7, and I have been a fan of pinning sites to the Task Bar as if they are desktop apps since I started using IE9.

I can pin any site to the Task Bar, but only the sites that are designed to take advantage of the features really get any benefit out of it. Thanks to WordPress, there are about 20 million more sites out there that can use pinning to make their blogs more integrated and accessible.

Microsoft’s Roger Capriotti explains in a recent Exploring IE blog post, “To continue providing their users with a truly great web experience, WordPress.com has implemented pinning and Jump List support for every one of their blogs. This means that blogs hosted on WordPress, like the Crazy4ComicCon blog we mentioned a few weeks ago automatically have the capability to pin their site to Windows 7 taskbars. Once pinned, customers can right-click on the favicon and see the last five blogs posted to the site via a dynamic Jump List.”

Add IE9 Site Pinning to Your Site in 15 Minutes

Tony Bradley — Tue, 31 May 2011 22:38:02 +0000

Pinned sites are one of the cool features of IE9 on Windows 7. A pinned site–if done right, and developed to take advantage of being pinned–treats the site as if it were an application, and makes it easier to navigate to key elements of the site.

Microsoft reports that sites that take advantage of pinning in IE9 have more engaged visitors who spend more time on the site:

Business Insider – read 57% more pages, spend 95% more time on site
Flixster – read 34% more pages, spend 57% more time on site
Gilt – visit 39% more often, add 160% more items to shopping cart, complete 45% more sales transactions
The Killers – read 65% more pages, spend 103% more time on site
hi5 – respond to 200% more social requests (like friends, games, notifications)
Huffington Post – spend 49% more time on site

But, there are some things that organizations must do in order for their sites to take advantage of pinning. I have written previously about how to prepare your site to take advantage of the features of Internet Explorer 9, but now Microsoft is making it even easier.

Microsoft has created a new site for developers (www.buildmypinnedsite.com) to add pinning capabilities in 15 minutes or less. Check out this post from the Exploring IE blog for more details, then go to buildmypinnedsite.com and hook your site up.

Windows 7: More Than Just a Coat of Lipstick on Vista

Tony Bradley — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:24:02 +0000

Microsoft critics are fond of saying that Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with a makeover, or that Windows 7 is nothing more than Windows Vista Service Pack 3, or that it is the operating system Microsoft should have developed instead of Windows Vista.

I never really had any issues with Windows Vista beyond having to struggle with printer drivers when it was first released. Personally, I think that most of the “problems” with Windows Vista are more perception than reality and that the real failure of Windows Vista is that Microsoft lost the marketing battle with Apple and other Microsoft critics.

People who have never even seen Windows Vista running will still tell me a list of the reasons why they hate it and those reasons are always just a sampling of sound bites from some “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercial Apple produced.

I liked Vista, but Windows 7 rocks. Windows 7 is no Vista with lipstick. Don’t take my word for it. Check out this blog post which lists some of the key differentiators that set Windows 7 apart from its predecessor.

Windows 7 Application Compatibility

Tony Bradley — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:16:54 +0000

Windows 7 is almost here. Enterprise customers will be able to get it soon and there are less than 2 months until it hits General Availability and lands on store shelves and pre-installed on PC’s and laptops. New features like Jump Lists and DirectAccess offer enticing incentive for enterprises.

There is some preparation and planning required before rolling out a new operating system in an enterprise though. One critical step is to validate that the applications the business relies on will work with the new operating system.

Microsoft has developed the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to help you do just that. The latest version, ACT 5.5, has been updated to perform application compatibility for Windows 7 systems. Download the tool and start assessing your applications so you can be ready for Windows 7. You can also check out this interview between Stephen Rose and Jeremy Chapman to learn more about the updates and changes in the most recent Application Compatibility Toolkit.

Jumping For Jump Lists

Tony Bradley — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:59:16 +0000

Ever since I started using Windows 7 in the pre-public Beta days one of my favorite features has been Jump Lists. It may not have the gee-whiz factor of AeroShake, but it is much more practical and enables me to work more efficently and save time.

With Windows Vista, I relied on the Recent Items list in the Start Menu. Recent Items linked to the last 10 or so files I had used. But, it only linked to certain file types and it wouldn’t take long to open 10 documents and run a file off the list. Then I’d have to open it the old-fashioned way by navigating through Windows Explorer file menus to find where the document is actually stored and open it back up.

Jump Lists takes the Recent Items concept and applies it on an application by application basis. Now Word, Excel, Windows Media Player, Quicken personal financial software, etc. all have their own list of most recently accessed files. I use the Jump Lists for accessing almost everything and find it to be a huge convenience and time saving benefit.

Check out this video clip to see Jump Lists in action.