The Jump Lists feature of Windows 7 offers you a list of recently used files or tasks used by a particular program, but you can modify the Jump List to always show your favorite items. To see a Jump List from the Start menu, just move the mouse cursor over the program’s name to see any recently used files or pages. You can also right-click a program’s icon in the Taskbar to see its Jump List, and then select what you want from the list.
Windows 7 includes a wealth of new features for developers to take advantage of. This includes better rendering subsystems, new sensor and location API’s, file libraries, federated search, and of course, the improved taskbar. My last article discussed the taskbar’s ability to show custom previews and toolbar icons. This article focuses on Jump Lists – the replacement for notification area context menus.
I’m finding tonnes of new stuff in Office 2010, especially in Outlook 2010 which is taking me some time to get used to. One feature I love that I hadn’t seen until this morning was the Jumplist integration with Windows 7. If you have Outlook pinned to the taskbar and right click you get quick access to the key features you’re likely to need. Sweet!
Another feature that I really like is a carry over from the Windows 7 operating system – the Jump Lists. Now when you want to open a file a jump list of your most recently opened documents will appear to the right of the menu item. This also works in some of the commands such as Save As and Print, with the Jump List providing many new options beyond what was available under the old menu system.
Windows 7’s new Jump Lists feature is designed to make it easier to find what you want and perform common tasks associated with an application. As with anything new, Jump Lists may take a little getting used to — but you’ll probably find they’re worth the effort. Here are some tips to help you put this handy feature to work.
In my last post on AutoCAD LT and Windows 7, I mentioned the jump list that you can access from the Start menu when AutoCAD LT is one of your frequently-used programs. But I forgot one – there’s a jump list on the taskbar icon too, which you can access by right-clicking.
Jumplists are one of my favorite features in Windows 7. They make apps easier to use by providing direct access to their most frequently used tasks and files. Unfortunately, jumplists are not available for all programs, which is why I’ve been searching for a way to add them to my favorite software – until I found Jumplist Extender.
I recently fell foul of an irritating problem on my Windows 7 workstation in my office; the Jump List for Windows Explorer had suddenly emptied itself. I had quite a few pinned locations, and for the next week or so I was frustrated several times a day when I instinctively right-clicked on the Explorer icon to open a frequently-used folder. It’s interesting how quickly you get used to a feature like that.
By default, the jump lists only show the 10 most recently used destinations. If you’d like to see more (or, I guess, fewer) recent items, you can customize that number. To do this right-click Start, click Properties, and then click Customize. Use the Number of Recent Items to Display in Jump Lists spin button to set the number of items you prefer (the maximum is 60), and then click OK.
This is the second post about the Taskbar Jump List in a series of Windows 7 Taskbar posts. In the previous post, Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 1, we introduced the elements that comprise the Taskbar Jump Lists: the destination (also referred to as “nouns”) and the Tasks (also referred to as “verbs”). As developer, you have a large amount of control over these elements. In this post, we walk through the different APIs that you can use when programming the Taskbar Jump Lists.
