IE9 Pinned Site Jump List Items Not Displaying Consistently Across Computers

Those following my blog know that I’ve been working on the Microsoft patterns & practices Web Guidance team and we are using Project Silk as the basis for delivering our web guidance.

One of the early project work items was to demonstrate IE9 windows shell integration or pinned sites. Project Silk has a nice pinned sites experience that includes static and dynamic jump list items as well as dynamic notification icons.

The dynamic jump list items and notification icons are driven by the number of overdue maintenance reminders the currently logged in user needs to attend to.

Our team had a lingering problem with the dynamic jump lists; they were not displaying consistently across team member computers. As you can imagine, this was a source of frustration since the feature is actually cool and requires very little in the way of code to implement.

I got up early this morning and started writing the Application Notifications chapter which includes our implementation of IE9 pinned sites. I’ve not been able to see the dynamic jump list items on my laptop or home computers. I spent about an hour debugging our JavaScript, hoping to find something wrong. No such luck.

Others on the Internet have reported similar problems with solutions ranging from disabling all shell extensions, to clearing out the jump list folders. (Not something I want to recommend to users of Project Silk.)

Turns out, the displaying of jump list items is tied to a Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog setting, “Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar.”

Required Configuration for Jump List Items to Display

If you’re like me and don’t want Windows adding items to an already busy start menu, you turn off both of the below options. However, for jump lists to work, you’ll need to enable the second option.

Not sure why jump list item displaying is tied to this setting, will have to inquire about this.

Close

You can follow Project Silk, provide feedback on the code and book chapters here.

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.

Project Silk Documentation Drop: New Chapters Ready for Review

Project Silk from patterns & practices, provides guidance for building cross-browser Web applications with a focus on client-side interactivity. These applications take advantage of the latest Web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and ECMAScript 5 along with modern Web technologies such as jQuery, Internet Explorer 9 and ASP.NET MVC3.

Guidance Chapters Ready for Review

Today’s drop includes the following chapters (provided in CHM or PDF format) that are ready for community review. Our team very much appreciates your feedback and technical review. All documentation feedback should be posted in the Issue Tracker; if required, a document can be attached along with the feedback.

• Architecture
• jQuery UI Widgets
• Server-Side Implementation
• Security
• Unit Testing Web Applications
• Widget QuickStart
• How to: Check UIElement Properties with Coded UI Test
• How to: Create Automation Negative case with Coded UI Test
• How to: Create Web Client Test Automation with Coded UI Test

jQuery UI Widget Chapter

The jQuery UI Widget chapter provides comprehensive coverage of the jQuery UI Widget Factory and how to author your own widgets.

Project Silk uses widgets to modularize its client-side JavaScript. Widgets are powerful objects that provide a good amount of built-in infrastructure yet are simple to use. The above Architecture chapter provides the high-level view of Project Silk and explains the important role widgets play.

What you can expect to learn from the widget chapter:

• How to define and apply widgets
• How to manage the lifetime of widgets
• How to define default options that permit overrides and change notifications
• How to use options for decoupling behavior and facilitating event subscriptions
• How to use private methods to improve the readability of the code
• How to define and use public methods, properties, and events
• How to inherit from a base widget

Downloads

Latest documentation drop (24 May 2011): http://silk.codeplex.com/releases/view/66995

Latest code drop (Drop 9 – 10 May 2011): http://silk.codeplex.com/releases/view/66045

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.

Registration Open for Prism, Unity, WPF, MVVM Boise Training Event

Registration is now open for the  patterns & practices Prism, Unity, WPF, MVVM training event, 27-29 June in Boise, ID. All event information can be found on the registration page.

Register:  http://prismboise-eorg.eventbrite.com/

In addition a dinner is planned for Sunday, 26 June at the Goodwood Barbecue Company at 6:00pm.

Register: http://prismboisedinner-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Very much looking forward to these events.

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.

Announcing a Prism, Unity, WPF, MVVM Training Event

Save the dates for a 3 day patterns & practices Prism, Unity, WPF, MVVM training event, 27-29 June in Boise, ID.

Join three Prism Team members Bob Brumfield (lead developer), Geoff Cox (developer), and myself (program manager) for an information packed 2 days of instruction followed up by a day of pair-programming.

Day one will consist of WPF and MVVM topics; day two Prism 4.0 and Unity; day three is dedicated to pair-programming, getting your questions answered, and an opportunity for you to apply the last two days’ training against your scenarios and programming style. The pair-programming day is always so much fun along with some wicked coding.

This is a free event for 75 attendees. Each seat has a desktop, power and wireless.

Registration will open soon and will be announced on my blog and twitter.

Very much looking forward to spending time with developers and taking in the beauty of Idaho.

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.

Project Silk Drop 8

The patterns & practices Web Guidance team just released Drop 8 of Project Silk. This drop includes bug fixes, more consistent JavaScript and additional test coverage.

Additionally, two guidance chapters are ready for community review:

• Server-side Architecture
• Widget QuickStart (updated 5/3/2011)

What is Project Silk?

Project Silk provides guidance for building cross-browser Web applications with a focus on client-side interactivity. These applications take advantage of the latest Web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and ECMAScript 5 along with modern Web technologies such as jQuery, Internet Explorer 9 and ASP.NET MVC3.

To illustrate this guidance, the project includes a reference implementation called Mileage Stats that enables its users to track various metrics about their vehicles and fill-ups. Much of the effort in building Mileage Stats was applied to the usability and interactivity of the experience. Animations were included to enhance the enjoyment of the site and Ajax is used to keep the interface responsive and immersive. A great deal of care was also taken to ensure the client-side JavaScript facilitates modularity and maintainability. To accomplish these design goals, the JavaScript code was structured into “widgets” that benefit from the jQuery UI Widget Factory.

Close

We welcome and appreciate your feedback on the application and book content.

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.