Patrice Neff May 16, 2011
Finally a no-frills simple screenshot tools. Works great on Windows.
What is it for? WinSplit Revolution is a small utility which allows you to easily organize your open windows by tiling, resizing and positioning them to make the best use of your desktop real estate.
What can it do? WinSplit is especially useful for high-end LCD screens with high resolutions because it helps you to efficiently manage many active windows. For example WinSplit is useful for owners of the Dell 2407FPW monitor. As you can see in the screenshots below, the advantages of using WinSplit is that it saves you from having to drag and drop windows by allowing you to snap windows into specific tiled configurations using simple keyboard hotkeys.
August 8, 2010 Leave a Comment
In Windows, console windows (aka command line or “DOS” windows) are special. In a UNIX-like environment a terminal emulator talks to a local virtual teletype and connects to three text streams: standard in, standard out and standard error. From the first version of Windows NT to now, the client-server runtime subsystem automatically creates a special window environment for any command-line program or shell. In fact, up until Windows 7, the window was actually owned by csrss.exe which runs with system privileges. These windows mostly look like the rest of Windows but they are different in deep ways. Even if you remove the entire graphics and windowing infrastructure from Windows as in Windows Server Core, you are left with the GINA logon screen and a console window which looks exactly the same because the code to draw them is in csrss.exe rather than the normal window manager. That’s also the reason why they aren’t themed in Windows XP. Console Windows also can’t be resized in the usual way. On the other hand, Console windows offer a richer programming environment than sdtin,stdout and sderror because they always have a title bar and exist within a window station which means that services like the clipboard can be assumed. The gist is that for reasons of backwards compatibility and security, it is difficult for Microsoft to change very much about how console windows work. And besides, it’s a nerd feature that normal people never use.
For me, there are some minor annoyances with console windows that I mostly try to ignore:
Its not easy to replace console windows with something else. If you use a terminal emulator with VTYs in the POSIX subsystem (like xterm in the POSIX/SUA subsystem) some console applications that expect to interact with the console window or the window station service won’t run at all or only work in a special mode, like PowerShell. Also, the VTYs exist in the POSIX subsystem and don’t have access to your current window station, so you can’t start windowing applications from a terminal on a VTY (like “explorer .” to open Explorer in the current command shell directory).
Console (aka Console2) is a modern terminal environment like a Gnome Terminal or Konsole for Windows that is 100% compatible with applications that expect a console window running in a window station. That’s because it works by hooking and hiding the console window created by CSRSS while providing a richer user environment. I gave up on this thing when I started using Vista x64 because it was broken. It has matured a lot since then and the latest beta works great with Windows 7 x64.
Zenburn is a low contrast color scheme originally developed for Vim and subsequently ported to almost everything. It’s a dark, low eye strain theme that is very addictive.
Here are Zenburn colors for console.xml:
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<colors>
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<color id="0" r="62" g="62" b="62"/>
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<color id="1" r="100" g="100" b="175"/>
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<color id="2" r="0" g="128" b="0"/>
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<color id="3" r="0" g="128" b="128"/>
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<color id="4" r="51" g="35" b="35"/>
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<color id="5" r="170" g="80" b="170"/>
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<color id="6" r="220" g="220" b="0"/>
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<color id="7" r="220" g="220" b="204"/>
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<color id="8" r="192" g="128" b="128"/>
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<color id="9" r="175" g="175" b="255"/>
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<color id="10" r="127" g="159" b="127"/>
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<color id="11" r="140" g="208" b="211"/>
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<color id="12" r="227" g="113" b="113"/>
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<color id="13" r="200" g="128" b="200"/>
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<color id="14" r="240" g="223" b="175"/>
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<color id="15" r="255" g="255" b="255"/>
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</colors>
Console.sf.net with Zenburn colors showing muted red error.
Console.sf.net with muted colors showing F7 history popup.
Console.sf.net with Zenburn colors, multiple tabs and transparency. (The elephant is my desktop wallpaper.)
Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable. Here's mine. Each has a distinct purpose, and I probably touch each at least a few times a week. For me, util means utilitarian and it means don't clutter my tray. If it saves me time, and seamlessly integrates with my life, it's the bomb. Many/most are free some aren't. Those that aren't free are very likely worth your 30-day trial, and perhaps your money.
Here are most of the contents of my C:\UTILS folder. These are all well loved and used. I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't use them constantly. Things on this list are here because I dig them. No one paid money to be on this list and no money is accepted to be on this list.
Personal Plug: Discover more cool tools and programming tips on my weekly Podcast with Carl Franklin - Hanselminutes (Podcast Feed/Podcast Archives) - "Our show is guaranteed not to waste your time. Free free to listen in double speed and waste half as much."
This is the Updated for 2009 Version of my 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007 List, and currently subsumes all my other lists. Link to http://www.hanselman.com/tools when referencing the latest Hanselman Ultimate Tools List. Feel free to get involved here in the comments, post corrections, or suggestions for future submissions. I very likely made mistakes, and probably forgot a few utilities that I use often.
"But these go to eleven..." - Nigel Tufnel
"Windows 7 is so full of win" - Overheard at Starbucks
"Sometimes I think sensitive people are more capable of reflection because they have to shut the world out to function." - @mfeathers
"If you use XML you have to pay the Angle Bracket Tax" - John Lam
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. - Jamie Zawinski
Scott's Note: Personally, I'm all about Windows 7 now, so I'm not using a 3rd party launcher any more as I don't see the need. However, here are some stand-outs I've used in the past that you might want to check out.
"Engage." - Jean-Luc Picard
"Sweet sassy molassey." - Karl Malone
"Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are."
"The Internet...It's a series of tubes." - Former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens
"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." - Steve Wozniak
"The Internet? Is that thing still around?" - Homer Simpson
"I didn't know anything about this. So I called up some folks at Microsoft, and apparently we make a lot of different image editors." - Steve Balmer
"So is Outlook the Operating System now?" - Me
Contents Copyright © 2003-2009 Scott Hanselman - Please link, don't copy this list...hyperlinks to are most welcome. Please follow me on Twitter.
I enjoyed the list, especially the anecdotes. Surprised you mentioned so many things that I use... AutoHotKey, Launchy, SciTE, Cygwin, PSTools, FireBug, Fiddler, RTM, Reflector, WinMerge, WebDeveloper, µTorrent, VLC, BugMeNot, Delicious, Wireshark, Strings, and many of the others.
In addition to 7-Zip, I also use IzArc, and find myself using it over 7-Zip more and more for various reasons.
The biggest utility you missed is called "CLCL", which does clipboard caching. Especially useful following a spurious reboot, or just whenever. Link at nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html
Great List - I'm not sure I'll get through it before the next version comes out... :-]
Without comaprison, I tend to amass utilities and never understood Microsoft's insistence on having to scroll the programs menu (started in Win 95 SP2? or Win 98, and people eventually gave up protesting with Vista?). Anyway, I have a few very highly recommended items:
For the Professional Developer (spend you money on these two, because there are no free alternatives that will get you even close ATM):
Araxis Merge - makes the process of comparing files and folders, merging complex differences, 2-way or 3-way, etc. almost fun... Nothing even comes close. Not free but affordable. After buying the core development tools for your job, this is the #1 or #2 tool I'd recommend spending money on. Stable, Easy to use, stayed at the top (i.e. as #1) of my most used apps list (in Windows XP) for well over a year during a major project. It also integrates with VS as the diff engine.
SQL Prompt - (by Red-Gate). Intellisense for SQL takes the tedium out of writing queries. A little more expensive than Araxis Merge IIRC, but still affordable and worth every penny. Productivity in SSMS is through the roof. Has a few quirks, but I can live with them. But I don't know how I lived without intellisense when writing SQL. This is the other of the top two tools I'd recommend spending money on. Determine which one is #1 or #2 based on how much SQL you write as opposed to how often you have to perform compare and merge operations.
For Everyone (no money required):
FF Add-on: CoolPreviews/CoolIris Preview lets you browse (and interact with) a preview of a page from a link. I open more pages through this than any other way.
Gizmo's Freeware - this started as a list of the 46 best freeware apps, and just took off. While not catering specifically to developers, the list is kept up-to-date, and contains a number of apps organized in categories. Any time I need to do something for which I don't have the right tool, I check his list out (http://www.techsupportalert.com/). And now I'll check your list out, too...
Other tools I also like:
Gizmo turned me onto Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). Simple, single purpose app. Before you can say "stitch these images together", ICE did (well, if you're from the South and talk real slow like). No muss, no fuss.
LiquidXML - I won't say I've tried all the XML tools out there - and I'm not a heavy user, but this one did the job for me in the past. Free community version or pay to get full VS integration etc. Create XSL from XML, create .NET code snippets for XML (the version I have does not generate LINQ to XML...), and of course edit and validate XML.
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WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows. Please visit the WinDirStat blog for more up-to-date information about the program. On start up, it reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:
The treemap represents each file as a colored rectangle, the area of which is proportional to the file's size. The rectangles are arranged in such a way, that directories again make up rectangles, which contain all their files and subdirectories. So their area is proportional to the size of the subtrees. The color of a rectangle indicates the type of the file, as shown in the extension list. The cushion shading additionally brings out the directory structure. |
Jump List tasks are application-specific actions that are tailored to a website. By using Jump List tasks, your website can surface the most frequently used commands to users. You should define the Jump List tasks based on both the website's features and the key actions a user is expected to undertake with them. The tasks provide a set of static URIs that users can access at any time, even if the browser instance is not running. Furthermore, these tasks provide a mechanism for your website to promote their most common destinations to users even when the user is not visiting your site. For instance, a web-based communication application could surface commands enabling users to quickly access their contacts, inbox, and profile information.
Figure 7: Jump List tasks associated with a communication site
All Jump List tasks are directly accessed by using a static URL path that is stored inside the .website file. Tasks are not expected to change frequently; however, they can be updated by modifying the meta elements on the webpage. Changes take effect the next time the user launches the pinned site, rather than when they are initially loaded by the browser.
You define Jump List tasks by using HTML meta tags. When accessing a pinned website, Windows caches and applies these tags during installation. URLs defined in tasks are not restricted to a domain. The following code example defines two Jump List tasks on a webpage: Task 1 and Task 2. When the user clicks Task 1, the pinned site window launches Page1.html. Similarly, when the user clicks Task 2, the pinned site window launches Page2.html on the microsoft.com domain.
<META name="msapplication-task" content="name=Task 1;action-uri=http://host/Page1.html;icon-uri=http://host/icon1.ico"/>
<META name="msapplication-task" content="name=Task 2;action-uri=http://microsoft.com/Page2.html;icon-uri=http://host/icon2.ico"/>
The pinned site window opens all tasks inside their own tab in the current pinned site window. If no browser instance exists, a new one is created. A website can define a maximum number of five tasks. Relative URLs on the action-uri field are resolved during install by using the URI of the page that contains the meta information.
Meta elements representing tasks can be updated by sites at any time. Changes to the Jump List tasks will be reflected the next time the site is launched.
Israel Hilerio, Ph.D.
Program Manager, Internet Explorer
September 15, 2010
This documentation was published for Internet Explorer 9 Beta. For the most current information, see the following:
Windows Internet Explorer 9 introduces pinned sites, a feature with which you can integrate your websites with the Windows 7 desktop. With pinned sites enabled for a website, users can pin that site to the Windows 7 taskbar or add the site to the desktop or Start menu. Pinned sites enable easy access to favorite websites and add shortcut functionality similar to that found in Microsoft Windows applications. In addition, pinned sites require little development cost and offer robust features. Some meta elements and JavaScript is all that you need to gain functionality; you need not modify any existing content or attributes for a current website.
The following screen shot showcases the functionality available through pinned sites.
Figure 1: Features in the Windows 7 taskbar that a pinned site can use
Windows generates a shortcut file with the .website extension for each pinned site, whether the site is pinned on the taskbar, added to the desktop, or Start menu. Windows associate the site’s URL as the start URL for a specific .website file and creates a unique AppID based on that URL. The AppID is shared by any window or tab created from this Windows Internet Explorer instance and enables users to treat all of their tabs and windows that are instantiated from the same site as one group.
When a user launches your website from a pinned site, the website renders with a custom-branded look using your site’s favicon, navigation button colors, and other information you provide. The pinned site window automatically starts an isolated instance of Internet Explorer that runs in a special mode (note that Browser Helper Objects and other toolbars are not enabled in this Internet Explorer mode). If an instance of Internet Explorer that is used for general web browsing crashes, this self-contained instance used for the pinned site is not affected and continues to operate normally.
The pinned site APIs and the HTML meta tags described in this article provide capabilities for websites to tightly interact with the user through desktop concepts familiar to customers who use native Windows applications. The following sections describes the common enhancements these APIS offer through a pinned site:
There is no programmatic way to pin a site to the taskbar. All pinning actions require user intervention. Users must complete one of the following actions to pin a site to the taskbar:
The following screen shot shows how a user might tear off a tab to pin the CNN website to the taskbar.
Figure 2: A user clicks and tears the tab to isolate it from any other tabs in the open browser
Figure 3: A user drops the tab on the taskbar to pin the site to the taskbar
After the site is pinned, notice that the site renders with custom enhancements. For instance, the Back and Forward buttons match the color of the website.
Figure 4: A pinned site that is customized by using meta elements incorporated in the website
We recommend that you encourage users to tear off tabs and use them as pinned sites. For instance, the following sample page from the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive site includes a prompt (you can dynamically disable this notification later, testing for the msIsSiteMode method to know when it is appropriate to do so).
Figure 5: A website displays a prompt to increase knowledge of pinned sites
With Internet Explorer 9, users can add any website to the Windows Start menu by using menu commands (click the Tools menu and then click Add site to Start menu). The website is then listed in the All Programs folder of the Start menu. In addition to user interaction, your website can promote this functionality programmatically by using the pinned site APIs. After adding a site through your website or the browser, users can then access the website through the Start menu, just as they access a native application running on Windows. As with those webpages pinned to the taskbar, webpages launched from the Start menu provide the fully branded experience once you provide markup to customize the start URL, icon, name, tooltip, and navigation button colors associated with the Start menu entry.
All of the mechanisms designed to add an entry into the Start menu generate a dialog box that asks users to confirm or cancel the operation, as the following screen shot shows.
Figure 6: The dialog box where users confirm whether to add an entry into the Start menu
Use the window.external.msAddSiteMode() method to add a site to the Start menu. The API can be triggered from any HTML element by using JavaScript, as in the following code example:
<a onclick="window.external.msAddSiteMode();" href="#">Add Website</a><br />
You can identify if a website has been launched as a pinned site by calling the window.external.msIsSiteMode method. The msIsSiteMode method returns a Boolean value that returns true if the window was launched as a pinned site; otherwise, false.
You use meta elements to customize the way the pinned site renders after it is launched from a pinned site location, by using the following syntax:
<meta name="name" content="content"/>
The values for name and content are described in the following table:
| Name | Content |
| application-name | The name of the shortcut. If missing, the document title is used instead. |
| msapplication-tooltip | Optional text that is displayed as a tooltip when the mouse pointer hovers over the pinned site shortcut icon in the Windows Start menu or desktop. |
| msapplication-starturl | The root URL of the application. If missing, the address of the current page is used instead. Only HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP protocols are allowed. |
| msapplication-navbutton-color | The color of the Back and Forward buttons in the pinned site browser window. Any named color, or hex color value as defined by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Level 3 (CSS3) is valid. For more information, see Color Table. If this meta element is absent, the color is based on the shortcut icon. |
| msapplication-window | The initial size of the pinned site browser window. Content sub-elements provide size as number N, separated by a semicolon.
|
The following code example uses meta elements to customize the pinned site shortcut with a tooltip, start URL, initial window size, and navigation button color.
<meta name="application-name" content="Sample Site Mode Application"/>
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Start the page in Site Mode"/>
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://example.com/start.html"/>
<meta name="msapplication-window" content="width=800;height=600"/>
<meta name="msapplication-navbutton-color" content="red"/>
You can also specify the favicon to use by following existing webpage syntax:
<LINK rel="shortcut icon" type=image/x-icon href="http://host/favicon.ico">
<LINK rel=icon type=image/ico href="./favicon.ico">
Windows attempts to retrieve a 32x32 version of the favicon from the specified file. If that size cannot be found, Windows frames the 16x16 version of the favicon inside a 32x32 document image. If no favicon is specified, Windows uses a framed version of the Internet Explorer icon. The favicon icon can also be overwritten by the user through the property settings dialog box.
Jump List tasks are application-specific actions that are tailored to a website. By using Jump List tasks, your website can surface the most frequently used commands to users. You should define the Jump List tasks based on both the website's features and the key actions a user is expected to undertake with them. The tasks provide a set of static URIs that users can access at any time, even if the browser instance is not running. Furthermore, these tasks provide a mechanism for your website to promote their most common destinations to users even when the user is not visiting your site. For instance, a web-based communication application could surface commands enabling users to quickly access their contacts, inbox, and profile information.
Figure 7: Jump List tasks associated with a communication site
All Jump List tasks are directly accessed by using a static URL path that is stored inside the .website file. Tasks are not expected to change frequently; however, they can be updated by modifying the meta elements on the webpage. Changes take effect the next time the user launches the pinned site, rather than when they are initially loaded by the browser.
You define Jump List tasks by using HTML meta tags. When accessing a pinned website, Windows caches and applies these tags during installation. URLs defined in tasks are not restricted to a domain. The following code example defines two Jump List tasks on a webpage: Task 1 and Task 2. When the user clicks Task 1, the pinned site window launches Page1.html. Similarly, when the user clicks Task 2, the pinned site window launches Page2.html on the microsoft.com domain.
<META name="msapplication-task" content="name=Task 1;action-uri=http://host/Page1.html;icon-uri=http://host/icon1.ico"/>
<META name="msapplication-task" content="name=Task 2;action-uri=http://microsoft.com/Page2.html;icon-uri=http://host/icon2.ico"/>
The pinned site window opens all tasks inside their own tab in the current pinned site window. If no browser instance exists, a new one is created. A website can define a maximum number of five tasks. Relative URLs on the action-uri field are resolved during install by using the URI of the page that contains the meta information.
Meta elements representing tasks can be updated by sites at any time. Changes to the Jump List tasks will be reflected the next time the site is launched.
Jump List categories are a great mechanism for your websites to surface dynamic information to end-users. Items can be added to the custom category from any webpage on the same domain. Jump List items within a custom category are visually separated from Jump List tasks and can be individually persisted or deleted by users. When a user clicks a Jump List item from a pinned site, the pinned site window displays that item in a separate tab on the same browser instance as the pinned site. Jump List items in a category list are not the way to send commands back to your application and avoid navigation, however. They are destinations intended to navigate a user to a URI.
Use Jump List categories to give users access to contextual information in the form of destinations or actions. Destinations can be used to access files, documents, or URLs. The items in the categories represent URLs with user-specific context. These might include a profile page on a social networking site or a radio station on a music streaming site. Users access the resources directly by clicking on the item links. Actions can include visiting sites, viewing history, and more. Your website can also use a custom category to notify users of interactions or alerts that are happening on the backend—new received email, friend online, upcoming appointment. Another advantage of custom categories is that they are persisted in the Jump List after the browser instance is closed. This provides users with a contextual mechanism for accessing site information when the browser is not running.
The following screen shot shows how Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access uses a custom category, Notifications, to display an upcoming appointment, scrum. When the user clicks scrum, IE opens a new tab on the same browser instance as the pinned site and displays the appointment information.
Figure 8: A custom notification in Outlook Web Access
Managing a custom category is divided into several stages:
window.external.msSiteModeCreateJumplist('List1');
Note that the category label is not visible until the category is populated with at least one item. Creating a second category replaces an existing one.
window.external.msSiteModeAddJumpListItem('Item 1', 'http://host/Item1.html', 'http://host/images/item1.ico');
window.external.msSiteModeAddJumpListItem('Item 2', 'http://host/Item2.html', 'http://host/images/item2.ico');
window.external.msSiteModeAddJumpListItem('Item 3', 'Item3.html', 'images/item3.ico');
window.external.msSiteModeShowJumplist();
window.external.msSiteModeClearJumplist();
The pinned site APIs display a maximum of 20 items at any one time in a custom category. If you add more than twenty items to a category, the previously added items are deleted. The pinned site APIs will not duplicate an existing entry; however, the duplicate entry will be moved to the top of the list. In some cases, the system may reduce the maximum number of items displayed. This is based on various factors such as user choice, display resolution, and font size. If there isn't space enough for all items in all categories, the items are truncated from the bottom up.
Websites are responsible for maintaining the state of the category and for adding and removing items to and from the category. In addition, your website can register for an event that is triggered when a user removes an item from a custom category by using one of the following event listeners:
document.addEventListener('mssitemodejumplistitemremoved', removed, false);
document.attachEvent('onmssitemodejumplistitemremoved', removed);
The listener generates a callback to a delegate with a URL parameter:
function removed(url) { … }
When a user removes an item from the Jump List, Windows cannot capture or pass back a shell event to the site. Thus, the event is artificially generated by the IE instance running the pinned site after the user adds a Jump List item and the website calls the msSiteModeShowJumplist method. However, the event is generated only if there are items that were deleted by the user prior to the site inserting them back. This creates a mismatch between the in-memory representation of the Jump List and the actual set of items in the Jump List. The pinned site APIs synchronize the in-memory Jump List representation and the actual Jump List items after the event is triggered.
Any page on the same domain can modify information on the Jump List category by using the JavaScript APIs.
Windows applications can communicate notifications and status to users by displaying an overlay icon on top of the application’s taskbar button. The msSiteModeSetIconOverlay method adds an icon overlay to the pinned site’s taskbar button. Overlay icons help draw attention to a website when the view to the pinned site’s window is blocked, as when the browser window is minimized or blocked by another window. Use overlay icons to supply important, long-standing status or notifications such as network status, online status, or new mail. Remember that presenting users with constantly changing overlays or animations creates a negative user experience.
Windows displays overlay icons in the lower-right corner of the taskbar button; however, the taskbar must be in the default large icon mode to display overlay icons. Overlay icons are not visible when the website is not running or when the website is not running as a pinned site. Overlay icons can be displayed from any webpage in the same domain. In addition, a website can apply multiple overlay icons without having to clear them first. However, when an overlay icon is cleared, Windows removes the icons starting from the most recently added. This implies that the clearing order is such that the last icon displayed is the first one removed.
The following screen shot shows how Outlook Web Access uses the overlay icon of a bell to notify the user that it is time for an appointment.
Figure 9: An overlay icon in Outlook Web Access
The following code example uses the msSiteModeSetIconOverlay method to add an overlay icon, overlay1.ico, on the taskbar button and provide a tooltip with the string “Overlay 1”.
window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay('http://host/images/overlay1.ico', 'Overlay 1');
Remove the overlay icon by calling the msSiteModeClearIconOverlay method.
window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay();
For native Windows applications, users interact with thumbnail toolbar buttons in the taskbar without having to restore or activate the site's window. A pinned site can make use of the same functionality for individual webpages. Each button represents a command that can be executed in the webpage, so users can interact with the webpage while in a minimized state or without activating it. The following screen shot shows how a webpage with multiple video clips uses thumbnail toolbar buttons to control the play, pause, and selection of videos without causing the user to access the page directly.
Figure 10: Thumbnail toolbar buttons to control video
You can display a maximum of seven buttons in a thumbnail toolbar. Because there is a limited amount of space in which to display thumbnails, as well as a constantly changing number of thumbnails to display, applications are not guaranteed a specific toolbar size. If display space is low, buttons in the toolbar are truncated from right to left as needed. Therefore, an application should prioritize the commands associated with its buttons to ensure that those of highest priority are to the left and are therefore least likely to be truncated.
When a user clicks a thumbnail toolbar button, an event with a specific ID is returned to the webpage for processing. These events are scoped to the domain that created the events. Buttons can be created, displayed, hidden, enabled, or disabled, or their image can be replaced.
Thumbnail toolbar buttons are defined in memory before they are displayed. The following code example uses the msSiteModeAddThumbBarButton method to create three thumbnail toolbar buttons, passing in the URL of an icon resource file in the first parameter and the (optional) tooltip in the second parameter. The method returns an ID that is used by the system when a thumbnail toolbar button click event is generated.
btn1 = window.external.msSiteModeAddThumbBarButton( 'http://host/images/button1.ico', 'button 1');
btn2 = window.external.msSiteModeAddThumbBarButton( 'http://host/images/button2.ico', 'button 2');
btn1 = window.external.msSiteModeAddThumbBarButton( 'http://host/images/button3.ico', 'button 3');
You capture events generated when the user clicks a thumbnail toolbar button by subscribing to the msthumbnailclick event with an event handler. The following code example registers an event handler, handler1, to process all events generated by the thumbnail toolbar buttons.
document.addEventListener('msthumbnailclick', handler1, false);
…
function handler1 (btn) {
alert ("addeventlist:thumbnail btn id" + btn.buttonID);
}
After being defined, you can instantiate a button only once, by using the msSiteModeShowThumbBar method.
window.external.msSiteModeShowThumbBar();
Use the msSiteModeUpdateThumbBarButton method to set the state and visibility of a button after the button has been instantiated. The following code example makes button1 disabled and visible, button2 enabled and visible, and button3 enabled but not visible.
window.external.msSiteModeUpdateThumbBarButton(btn1, false, true);
window.external.msSiteModeUpdateThumbBarButton(btn2, true, true);
window.external.msSiteModeUpdateThumbBarButton(btn3, true, false);
Changes to the button state take place immediately; however, changes to the button visibility take place only after the thumbnail preview window is refreshed.
You can define and implement alternate styles to dynamically replace button information already displayed in the thumbnail toolbar. First, define a new style. Use the msSiteModeAddButtonStyle method to define an alternate icon image and tooltip for the specified button. Each style contains a replacement image and a new tooltip value. The following code example defines style1 for btn1 using a new image and tooltip.
style1 = window.external.msSiteModeAddButtonStyle(btn1, 'http://host/images/style1.ico', 'style1');
Then, apply defined styles to the already displayed buttons by using the msSiteModeAddButtonStyle method. The following code example applies the previously defined style1 to btn1.
window.external.msSiteModeShowButtonStyle(btn1, style1);
Your site should hide thumbnail toolbar buttons when a user exits the website’s domain or navigates away to other pages. Similarly, sites should re-instantiate these buttons and make them visible when a user returns to the page.
When re-instantiating these buttons a site should not call the msSiteModeShowThumbBar method on the same instance as an exception will be triggered. At a minimum the method should be called with a try/catch block around it to ensure the buttons continue to work once they are reinitialized and made visible again. To support this scenario, you can call the msSiteModeAddThumbBarButton method multiple times to reinitialize your variable with the necessary ids that will be used inside the event handler to deal with the event. Therefore, the msSiteModeAddThumbBarButton method is guaranteed to return the same button id every time. This allows you to reuse your event handling logic independent of any navigation outside of the page.
At times, you will want to notify users that your site requires interaction to advance or complete a task. Use the msSiteModeActivate method to start the flashing of the pinned site icon on the taskbar. For example, use this interaction when a user needs to enter their credentials, when a download is completed, or when another user is trying to communicate with a user.
To activate the state, call the msSiteModeActivate method.
window.external.msSiteModeActivate();
The icon flashes a maximum 20 times before the taskbar button stays permanently lit. After the user interacts with the site, Windows resets the taskbar button to the non-flashing state.
Pinned sites use icons in several places: Jump List destinations, the taskbar button, thumbnail preview buttons, and overlay icons. Icon files should contain the following size representations:
You should use feature detection to verify that a browser supports pinned sites. The following code example evaluates to true if the feature is supported in your browser:
if (window.external.msIsSiteMode) {
// Check if the website was launched from a pinned site.
if (window.external.msIsSiteMode())
{
// TRUE
}
else
{
// FALSE
}
}
Note The Internet Explorer 9 Beta release requires that the call to test for the API happens in a try/catch block, as follows:
try {
if(window.external.msIsSiteMode()) { }
else {}
}
catch(e) { }
By using pinned sites, users integrate their favorite websites with the Windows 7 desktop, Start menu, and taskbar as they do for an application running executable code on Windows. Using the pinned sites APIs, your webpages can enhance desktop integration and push information, notifications, and alerts to users without requiring the browser window to be in view. In addition, pinned sites enable a branded experience and promote your website’s capabilities in the taskbar.
Israel Hilerio is a program manager on the Internet Explorer team.
Patrice Neff May 16, 2011
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Patrice Neff Sep 5, 2011