One of the most exciting new features in Internet Explorer 9 is the ability to “pin” your favorite websites to your Windows 7 taskbar. I just added a jumplist to my blog today!

Try it out – If you’re running IE9, drag and drop the browser tab showing this page on to your taskbar and see what happens.

Not only can your visitors pin your website, you can also add Tasks (or links) when your visitors right click on their pinned website.

Pinning is really cool because:

• Your visitors can pin their favorite website to their taskbar
• The pinned website icon is always displayed on the taskbar and the probability of the visitor returning back to your website is very high. This helps you retain your visitors.
• Plus, they don’t have to remember the URL
• You can add common areas of your website as a menu when they right click on the icon of your pinned website, giving them instant, one click access to all areas of your website.

Here are some interesting examples of IE9 jumplists in Action – Amazon, Facebook, Bing and ebay. There are plenty more websites out there already making use of this handy feature.

So, just how easy is it to add a jumplist to your website? It’s as simple as adding a few <meta> tags.

As an example, to display the jumplist that I added to my blog, here’s the code:

<meta name="application-name" content="microsoftNOW blog"/>
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Launch MicrosoftNOW Blog"/>
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://www.microsoftnow.com">
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=About;action-uri=/about;icon-uri=/find.ico" />
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=For Partners;action-uri=/category/partners;icon-uri=/man2.ico" />
<meta name="msapplication-navbutton-color" content="black"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

For more information, check out the Pinned Sites Cookbook on MSDN.

If you’ve installed Internet Explorer 9 beta to try out the new features and you want to uninstall it once you’re done, follow these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel

2. Open Programs and Features.

3. Click View Installed Updates

4. Click Windows Internet Explorer 9 in the list and click the Uninstall button.

5. Restart your PC and you’re good to go!

Internet Explorer 9 Beta is now available for download.

Highlights:

• Hardware Acceleration unlocks the full power of your PC
  Today’s websites and browsers only use about 10% of the processing power your PC has to offer. Internet Explorer 9 unlocks the other 90%. With Internet Explorer 9, we’re tapping into your graphics processor through Windows to harness the full potential of your PC. It makes HD video smoother, colors truer, graphics clearer, and websites more responsive. Combined with our new JavaScript engine, the web now performs like an application installed directly on your computer.

• Lesser Clicks
  

  We’ve also added a several ways to reduce the number of clicks it takes to get where you’re going. You can pin your favorite sites to your task bar for single-click access. Pinning, Jumplists and Aero Snap.

• Your sites shine
  Designed to get you to the web faster and get out of the way once you’re there, Internet Explorer 9 lets web content come forward and shine.
  • One single drop down menu
  • “Tear off" tabs let you view websites side by side
  • Address bar and search box combined to One box
  • Notifications appear in the bottom of the browser window instead of popping up
  • When you open a new tab, IE9 suggests commonly visited websites to open
• HTML5 support
  

  Through active participation in standards development in CSS3 and SVG working groups, co-chairing the HTML5 Working Group, and leading the HTML5 Testing Task force, we are actively helping set the standards for the modern web. Through our investments in standards and interoperability, we hope to help bring predictability to web programming. Because when you can spend less time rewriting your sites to work across browsers, you can spend more time creating amazing experiences.

  Internet Explorer 9 introduces support for modern web standards, including CSS3, HTML5, SVG, ICC Color Profiles, DOM L2 and L3, and ECMAScript5.

Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Beta incorporates a number of feature updates including archiving and discovery enhancements, a faster Outlook Web App (OWA), upgraded mobility features, and several improvements in the management UI. The SP1 beta is available to the public and can be downloaded today.

Recently, Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 was also made available to customers in 11 languages for both 32 and 64 bit. As highlighted in the recent post on the Exchange Server Team Blog,  this service pack was created in response to strong customer demand for Windows Server 2008 R2 supportability for Exchange Server 2007. In addition to the newly supported OS, this service pack also provides updates to a number of core components and the reintroduction of the password reset functionality within OWA for customers using Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

I’ve been using the Office 2010 Technical Preview and the Beta for quite some time now. In this post, I share 10 new features in Office 2010 that I like.

1. Video Editing features in Powerpoint

   You can now easily trim a video (i.e. play only a section of a video) or transform it in Powerpoint, without the need for any third-party tools.

   Right click on video, choose Trim Video.

   

   Choose Start and End points for the video.
   

   Transform the video using any 3D/bevel option.

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   You can also add a reflection on your video!
   

   Run the presentation, the video plays as trimmed and automatically transformed/rendered as you selected, and the reflection also changes depending on the motion in the video!
    

2. Insert Screenshot

   You can now insert a screenshot of any application that is currently running on your PC without having to hit PRINT SCREEN.

   

3. Ribbon Interface in Outlook
   
   
4. Conversation view in Outlook

   Makes it easy to group messages with the same subject (conversation). Also makes it easy to ignore or trash “conversations” with one click.

    

5. Artistic Effects

   Can even make your clipart and photographs look like oil paintings, pastels, pencil sketches and more.

   

6. Protected View
   For documents that originated from the Internet.

   

7. Show/Hide the Office Ribbon (toolbar)
   You can minimize the Office Ribbon when you need some extra space by clicking the show/hide button marked in red.

   

8. Backstage View
   This has replaced the Office menu. When you click the File tab, you are taken to a “Backstage”, where you can view and control properties for the document.

    

9. Social Networking capability in Outlook

   Leverages functionality from SharePoint and Exchange Server and displays photographs and social networking information for all individuals involved in an email conversation.

   

    

   

    

10. Smart tags in Outlook

    Lets you quickly see ways in which you can interact with a user (instant messaging, phone numbers, email),  his picture, profile, organizational information, etc. Very handy – and fully integrates with Office Communicator and SharePoint.

    

    

    
    
    

There are lots of other new features in Office 2010, this is just a preview of 10 features that I like. To get updates from my blog, subscribe with RSS or subscribe by email or get Windows Live Alerts.

Windows 7 Beta will begin bi-hourly shutdowns starting from July 1, 2009. The Beta will completely expire on August 1, 2009.

Windows 7 Beta users should do a clean install of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC), which will expire on June 1, 2010. Bi-hourly shutdowns of the RC will start on March 1, 2010.

SharePoint Server 2010 will require a 64-bit edition of SQL Server – more specifically either SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 running on Windows Server 2008.

SharePoint Server 2010 will not support Internet Explorer 6. Users will have to use Internet Explorer 7 or above. However, non-Microsoft  browsers such as FireFox 3.x (on Windows & non-Windows platform) and Safari 3.x (on non-Windows platform) will be supported.

The Office 2010 beta will be available in July, but SharePoint Server 2010 beta will not be made available at that time.

Enterprise Search in Office 2010 has been improved, with Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer.

This information was revealed during the TechEd conference.

Outlook Web Access in Exchange Server 2010 offers integrated instant messaging capability right from the browser.

Check this out:

You also see presence information against each contact in an email header.

You can also change your status from the top right corner of the OWA page:

The public beta of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, part of Microsoft’s unified communications family, is now available. Exchange 2010 is the first server in a new generation of Microsoft server technology designed and developed to work on-premises and as an online service, and introduces a new integrated e-mail archive and features to reduce costs and improve the user experience.

New features in Exchange 2010:

• New Rights-Protected E-Mail Functionality with Active Directory RMS
• New Transport and Routing Functionality
• New Permissions Functionality
• New High Availability Functionality
• New Messaging Policy and Compliance Features
• New Outlook Web Access Features
• New Unified Messaging Features
• Web Management Interface
• New Exchange Core Store Functionality
• New Administration Functionality in the Exchange Management Console
• New Administration Functionality in the Exchange Management Shell

Download the beta today at: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/trial-software.aspx

NOTE: Exchange Server 2003 is already out of mainstream support as of April 14. If you are running Exchange Server 2007, you should *really* consider upgrading!

February 24, 2009

It has been quite a while since Paint and WordPad, two of the most common Windows accessories got some makeover.

Paint was one of the first Windows tools I ever used. Back in the Windows 3.x days it used to be called “Paintbrush”. WordPad used to be called “Write”.

Those days have gone by, and now, we have Windows 7 Beta, which added the Office 2007-style “ribbons” for the toolbars in Paint and WordPad.

Paint also got some feature enhancements, with some cool new brushes (demonstrated above), and the ability to add AutoShapes (arrows, callouts, etc).

Just for old times’ sake, here’s how Paintbrush used to look like in Windows 3.1: