And now for something completely different. I usually keep topics of a technical nature confined to my technical blog and those of a writing nature to this one. But sometimes the lines blur, at least a little.
Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Truth be told, I'm more of a Chrome user now, but that doesn't mean I won't jump at the chance to try something new. Besides, I work for a Microsoft shop, so I'm always evaluating their latest and greatest technologies.
One of the cool new features in IE9 is the ability to pin web sites to the Windows 7 taskbar. What this basically means is that a web site can live alongside a desktop app on the taskbar, giving the user an easy way to launch a web site and full access to that site's jump list items. Jump lists appear in Windows 7 when you right-click on an application in the taskbar. For these jump list items in particular, the catch is that you have to use IE9 Beta (at least until Chrome, Firefox, and others implement this feature) running on Windows 7 to drag the site in question to your taskbar and, also, the site owner needs to add some meta tags to their site.
I added the needed meta tags to my site inside the <head> section. Here are the tags:
1: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Book Reviews;action-uri=/post/Book-Reviews-The-Complete-List.aspx;icon-uri=/themes/Darkside/images/book.ico" />
2: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Novels;action-uri=/fiction.aspx;icon-uri=/themes/Darkside/images/pencil.ico" />
3: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Short Fiction;action-uri=/post/Short-Fiction.aspx;icon-uri=/themes/Darkside/images/pencil.ico" />
4: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=scottmarlowe on Twitter;action-uri=http://twitter.com/scottmarlowe;icon-uri=/themes/Darkside/images/twitter.ico" />
5: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=scottmarlowe on Good Reads;action-uri=http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1365845;icon-uri=/themes/Darkside/images/book.ico" />
6: <meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="./" />
7: <meta name="application-name" content="Scott Marlowe's Blog" />
8: <meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Scott Marlowe's Blog" />
As you can see, I added jump list items that allow a user quick access to particular points in my site, as well as direct links to my presence on Twitter and Goodreads.
Now, when I'm on my site, I can drag the browser tab or favicon to the taskbar:
That pins a new application shortcut to my taskbar so that when I right-click on the web site/application, I get:
If you examine the meta tags above, you'll see that each corresponds to the items in the topmost "Tasks" section. Now I can access certain parts of my site, as well as some of my social connections, with no more than a couple of clicks. If anyone actually read this blog and was interested in accessing, say, my book reviews or fiction, they're right there.
The practical application for this feature is probably better demonstrated by looking at the same functionality for Twitter, which has implemented the jump list meta tags:
Even better might be the same functionality provided by a site like Google's Gmail, but they hadn't yet added the meta tags to their site.
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