Pinned Sites using Internet Explorer

Most of the information and text is from MSDN. The purpose here is to summarize the pinned sites.

Overview

Users of Windows Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 can pin any website to the Windows 7 taskbar or Windows 8 Start screen just as they pin applications. When a website is pinned, it can be opened quickly and conveniently. A Pinned site is more than just a shortcut, however. With very little effort, developers can access features of the Windows 7 taskbar or Windows 8 Start screen from their websites—features that can greatly improve a user’s ability to navigate, control, and interact with the sites they visit.

Benefits of Pinned sites

Websites that implement the Pinned site API can feel more like a native Windows application. Site developers can build a more compelling website that have higher engagement by:

• Declaring a static list of tasks for fast navigation to common destinations within a site.
• Creating a dynamic list of destinations that are personalized and relevant to the user.
• Drawing the user back to the website by flashing the taskbar button or displaying a icon overlay.
• Adding remote controls and commands to the taskbar’s preview window.
• Making the browser look and feel like your site by changing the color of the Back and Forward buttons.
• Promoting a high-resolution site icon that extends your site’s brand outside the browser.

How to Build a Pinned Site

Its a matter of meta tags in the head element of the HTML page, here’s a MSDN Blog that shows all of the meta tags for pinned sites. For a dynamic jump lists (elements in the list), you can add them using a small JavaScript that injects the meta tags to the header after the page loads; example. RSS feeds.

Generate Meta Tags

There are two meta tags generators:

• First to generate for Windows 7 taskbar
• Second for Windows 8 live tiles

Ghaleb’s Blog Sample

Ghaleb’s blog supports pinned sites, that redirects you to the social media, and has a jump list for the recent blog posts .

References

Here is the list of the references for pinned sites:

• Pinned sites developer documentation
• Declaring pinned site meta data
• How to create a pinned site