Web designers and developers can customise how their site looks when dragged to the taskbar, including the icon used, custom colours to be used for IE9’s forward and back button, and coolest of all, your own jump list with links to various areas of your site, which appears when the user right clicks on the taskbar icon.

It’s easy to configure IE9 customisation settings for your site by inserting a few lines of code in your header. For example, here’s the code used here at Channel 9 to configure the taskbar icon and jump list links:

<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Coffeehouse;action-uri=/forums/coffeehouse;icon-uri=/styles/images/favicon.ico"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Browse All Content;action-uri=/Browse;icon-uri=/styles/images/favicon.ico"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Shows;action-uri=/Browse/Shows;icon-uri=/styles/images/favicon.ico"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" href="/styles/images/favicon.ico"/>

For more on IE9’s customisation options, check out MSDN. If you’re running a Wordpress site and you’re feeling a little lazy (I’ve got my hand up here), a new plugin is available which makes life even easier.IE9 Pinned Site allows you to configure IE9’s customisation settings in Wordpress’ admin area, and will slot in the code for you.

Pinned Sites is just one of a swathe of new features available in IE9 – whether you’re a browser, writer, site admin or developer, make sure you check it out.

About TechSmith

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Other ISV Videos

For videos on how you can light up your application on Windows 7, see:

• IndustryBuilt adopts Windows 7 MultiTouch in justfoodERP for Food Industry
• Gunther Lenz, Microsoft chats with Al Perez, Total Computer about technologies such as Windows 7, .Net, and Visual Studio.
• Sara Faatz from Infragistics talks to Murray Gordon at MIX10
• To-Increase adopts Windows 7 MultiTouch for complex ERP Processes
• RES Software Lights Up Personal Desktops on Windows 7
• From Paper to the Cloud Part 2 -- Epson's Windows 7 Touch Kiosk For Marksheets
• Marketron Partners for Improved Business Intelligence, User Experience
• AnswerPoint Medical Systems leverages native features of Windows 7 for EMR Solution
• BumpTop brings 3-D Desktop to Windows 7 users
• Panopto utilizes Windows 7 features in Presentation Recording solution
• SARANGSoft Data Backup, Data Recovery Software Lights Up on Windows 7
• QuarkPromote Lights Up Windows 7 with RIA Web Application on Windows Azure

For videos on Windows Phone 7, seeL 

• Teenager Makes Money Writing Windows Phone 7 Apps with AdCenter
• Talking  with Karmak.com about business applications on Windows Phone 7
• BinaryDads talk about building applications for Windows Phone 7
• Game Design and Development in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
• Credit Card Processing for Windows Phone 7 on Windows Azure

For videos on Windows Azure Platform, see:

• Accumulus Makes Subscription Billing Easy for Windows Azure
• Azure Email-Enables Lists, Low-Cost Storage for SharePoint

For other videos about independent software vendors (ISVs):

• Quark Extends SharePoint for Dynamic Publishing
• ProModel Adds Simulation, Visualization to Microsoft Project
• Slingbox Maker Sling Media Describes Cross-Platform Commitment to Silverlight

For more news, tips, and links to developer training, see the US ISV Community blog.

To learn more about Jack Henry and the banking products they offer, visit:

www.jackhenry.com

Instead of accessing the jump list for an individual program, the app lets you pin a jump list for a combination of programs, files and other shortcuts into one single launcher. In other words: multiple programs, one button.

In fact, you can now add up to 60 programs into this app and you can even configure it to launch one default program when you left click on it. And you can group the programs as you see fit. For example, you could create a group called “Office” which lists all the Microsoft Office programs and another called “tools” which holds all your utilities.

The program has been revised seven times so far, so if you encountered bugs early on in its life cycle, you may want to try it again.

Jumplist Launcher is available for free download here.

To facilitate the process, he provided a zip file containing multiple “blank shortcuts” and blank.exe files. (Don’t worry – we scanned them with Microsoft Security Essentials – they’re safe. Other forum users tested them too).

After extracting the files, you’ll have a folder called “Blank” and a ReadMe.txt. Before pinning the Shortcuts to the taskbar, you have to move the entire “Blank” folder to C:\Windows. Then grab a shortcut and drag it to the taskbar. Now, instead of seeing a blank (white) icon, you’ll just see a space! The zip file contains four different “blank” shortcuts and you can only use one of each.

What a great trick!

Out of the box, the Windows 7 taskbar provides support for tabbed thumbnails. For example, when Internet Explorer uses tabs, they show up on the taskbar preview as if they were regular windows. Cool as this functionality is, it doesn’t come for free. As a developer, you need to manage these tabs and make sure they appear on your application's taskbar button. This screencast shows you how to add tab support to your application.

The code shown in this screencast is available to download.The other screencasts in this series are:

• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Working with Application ID
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Using the Taskbar Button Overlay Icons and Progress Bar
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump Lists Part 1
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump List Part 2
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Custom Previews and Thumbnail Clips   

Out of the box, the Windows 7 taskbar provides support for thumbnail and previews, which make it easier for users to preview running applications and switch between application windows with greater confidence. But sometimes you want to override the default behavior; this screencast shows how you can create custom thumbnail previews and thumbnail clips to provide your unique preview implementation.

The code shown in this screencast is available to download. The other screencasts in this series are:

• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Working with Application ID
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Using the Taskbar Button Overlay Icons and Progress Bar
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump Lists Part 1
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump List Part 2
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Tabbed Thumbnails

This screencast is the second of two screencasts focused on Windows 7 taskbar Jump List functionality. In the first jump list screencast you learned the basics of using file association and the default Recent and Frequent categories. In this part you dive into customizing jump list tasks and creating your own custom category.

The code shown in this screencast is available to download. The other screencasts in this series are:

• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Working with Application ID
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Using the Taskbar Button Overlay Icons and Progress Bar
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump Lists Part 1
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Custom Previews and Thumbnail Clips   
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Tabbed Thumbnails

Related blog posts:

• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 1, 
• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 2,
• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 3,

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

This screencast explains how to use the Win 32 API to control the taskbar's Overlay Icons and Progress bar. Both taskbar features exists to compensate for the deprecated Notification Area (AKA as Sys-Try)

• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Working with Application ID
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump Lists Part 1
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump List Part 2
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Custom Previews and Thumbnail Clips   
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Tabbed Thumbnails

This screencast is the first of two screencasts focused on Windows 7 taskbar Jump List functionality. In these screencasts you can learn how to work with and customize Windows taskbar jump lists in your application. First you need to handle the basics of using file association and the default Recent and Frequent categories. In the second part you dive into customizing jump list tasks and creating your own custom category.

• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Working with Application ID
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Using the Taskbar Button Overlay Icons and Progress Bar
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump List Part 2
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Custom Previews and Thumbnail Clips   
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Tabbed Thumbnails

• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 1, 
• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 2,
• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 3,

This screencast provides a quick overview of the Windows 7 taskbar and its functionality. We also provide a closer look at programming the Windows 7 taskbar using the taskbar Application ID to control the way windows are grouped and presented as taskbar buttons. This screencast focuses on the native API.

This is the first of six screencasts about programming the Windows 7 taskbar using native code. You can download the code shown in the screencast. The other screencasts in this series are:

• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Using the Taskbar Button Overlay Icons and Progress Bar
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump Lists Part 1
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump List Part 2
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Custom Previews and Thumbnail Clips   
• Programming the Windows 7 Taskbar – Tabbed Thumbnails

Related blog posts:

• Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Application ID

With this application, you can switch off jump lists and replace them with standard menus (why? Jump lists are great!), choose to not group applications (noooo!), change what the a left click does, and more. However, the only setting that would appeal to me in this application is its ability to adjust what the middle click button does. With Taskbar Tweaker, you can change it to close a window or focus a window instead of launching a new program instance. Since I don’t typically launch more than one app (most of my apps are in the browser anyway), this one could actually be a nice tweak. A middle click is a bit easier than having to click on that tiny little red X button to close an app, which Lee Mathews also points out in his blog post.

Still, for that one setting alone, I don’t think I’ll be downloading a whole new software program just to make the switch. But that’s just me. You might find more settings you want to tweak than I do. If so, you can download the Tweaker application for yourself from here (32 and 64-bit versions are available.)

Although this feature is only a keyboard combo away, there are those of you out there who prefer to have access to features from icons you can click with your mouse. (You’ll know if you fall into this category if you’ve been finding yourself wondering why the “Show Desktop” button got moved in Windows 7 all the way over to the far right of the taskbar.)

For this group of users, the following tip will come in handy.

Adding Flip 3D to the Taskbar

As you already know, the new Windows taskbar lets you pin your frequently used applications to its interface for quick launching. Since Flip 3D is essentially just an application, the same can be done with it, too. Just follow these steps (courtesy of Windows7News):

1. Right-click on your desktop, select New, and then select Shortcut.

2. In the location field, type C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe dwmapi #105 (assuming that Windows is installed on C:)

3. Click Next, and then type Window Switcher for the shortcut name, then press Finish.

4. Right-click on the Window Switcher shortcut that you just created and then click on Properties.

5. Click on the Change Icon… button.

6. In the Look for icons in this file field type %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\imageres.dll, and then press Enter.

7. Select the first icon and then click on OK.

8. Click on OK to dismiss the properties dialog.

9. Drag the Window Switcher shortcut from your desktop onto the taskbar.

Note: Flip 3D will only work if Aero is enabled.

Based on your use of resources, the meters will glow red, yellow, or green accordingly and these settings are user-configurable if you want to change the defaults. You can also adjust the update frequency, if desired.

If your resource usage spikes, you can right-click on the meter to access a jump list that lets you quickly open Task Manager or the Resource Monitor to see what may be bogging you down.

The applications are available for download from here. Taskbar Meters are for Windows 7 only.

(via Life Rocks 2.0)

Icon Overlay:
In this part I show you how to implement custom Icon Overlays in the taskbar indicating status in the taskbar of your application. In your applications you can use this to

1. Can indicate the status of your application or provide other useful information (such as online/offline, sign in status, status of your application).
2. Dynamically change the icon.

The source code is available here.

With the general availability of Windows 7 just around the corner this is your chance to get the following exclusive and free benefits from Microsoft for your Company within less than 10 minutes for showing Windows 7 compatibility:

•  A copy of Windows 7 BEFORE it launches to the general public on October 22^nd
• Exposure through the Microsoft Channels
• Marketing material for Co-Marketing
• Microsoft Partner Network Points
• Use of the Microsoft Frontrunner logo

Let me know if you would like to know more on how to receive these benefits.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me.

Also, check out my blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/glenz .

Once installed, you can use Taskbar Overlord in order to middle-click to close an open application – just like closing a tab in the IE8 or Firefox web browser. He also added a feature that lets you left-click a program icon to switch to the last active window you were using instead of showing you the thumbnail previews (available when you have multiple windows of that application open).

The Taskbar Overlord is actually a little AutoHotkey script that makes these two changes for you. If you’d rather have one of the changes and not the other – you’re in luck. There are actually several different versions of the program available for download:

• Taskbar Overlord - Source Code. This includes both the left click and middle click functionality as an .ahk script file.
• Taskbar Overlord Executable - Left and Middle Click.
  Has both features. Switches to the last active window when left clicking. Closes all windows when middle clicking.
• Taskbar Overlord Executable - Left Click Only.
  One feature only. Switches to the last active window when left clicking.
• Taskbar Overlord Executable - Middle Click Only.
  One feature only. Closes all windows when middle clicking

[UPDATE: Direct links above may not work for you, click here and download directly.]
Future releases and bug fixes will be announced in the following feed: http://www.ocellated.com/tag/taskbar-overlord/feed/.

Part IV -- Preview and Window Peek:  
In the last part of the screencast series I show you how to develop an application that

1. Allows you to show a clipped Taskbar Preview of your application, on a defined location of your application window.
2. Dynamically changes the size of the preview image in the Taskbar.
3. Change the preview image to show a custom Icon instead.
4. Show a custom Window Peek Bitmap of your application when hovering with the mouse over the Taskbar Preview.

The source code is available here.
You can download the managed wrappers for the Windows 7 API from the Vista Bridge web page.

Part III -- JumpList:
In this part I show you how to develop an application that

1. Creates a custom category for the Jumplist.
2. Allows you to add Items to the custom Jumplist category (in this case text files, opened in Notepad when selected).
3. Add user tasks to the Jumplist such as opening the calculator or notepad when selected.
4. Add a separator to the Jumplist to group items.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/GLenz/Windows-7-Taskbar-in-10-Minutes-Part-III-Jumplists/ . The source code is available here.

Part II -- Icon Overlay:
In this part I show you how to implement custom Icon Overlays in the taskbar indicating the happiness (happy/unhappy) of your application. In your applications you can use this to

1. Can indicate the status of your application or provide other useful information (such as online/offline, sign in status, status of your application).
2. Dynamically change the icon.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/GLenz/Windows-7-Taskbar-in-10-Minutes-Part-II-Icon-Overlay/The source code is available here.

Part I -- ProgressBar and Status:
In the first part of my screencast series I develop an application that allows to

1. Show the progress of the applications work in the taskbar.
2. Indicate the status (Paused, Normal, No determinate, Error).
3. Dynamically change the status based on events.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/GLenz/Windows-7-Taskbar-in-10-Minutes-Part-I-Progress-Bar/ . The source code is available here .

The Windows API Code Pack can be downloaded here.

I hope you found the series of Screencasts useful and to the point .

Also, check out my blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/glenz .