Make your website stand out in Windows 8

Buried within Windows 8 are little-
known features that can give your
website a prominent presence
alongside the apps on any user's
desktop. Exploiting these options
can enhance your site's visitor
experience and give your business
a competitive advantage. For
example, people can pin your
website to Windows 8's new Start
Screen, share your site with others
via its Charms bar, and access
shortcuts to your content.
Although Windows 8 remains
controversial, it counts millions of
early adopters, and Windows will
likely remain the most popular
operating system for the
foreseeable future. That's why it
matters to optimize your website
now for Microsoft's newest OS.
Luckily, all it takes is adding add
some custom code to your website,
and it doesn't take heavy-duty
developer skills. Read on to get
started.
Customize your Windows 8 Start
Screen tile
When visitors browse your website
using the Internet Explorer app in
the new Windows 8 interface, they
can pin your site to the Windows
Start Screen
. This creates a "live tile" icon in
Windows, serving as a shortcut to
your site.
Make sure your website has a
favicon--the Favorite or Bookmark
icon that appears in your browser's
address bar or tab--since that icon
appears in Windows 8's tile.
Otherwise, you'll see the IE icon by
default. Windows 8 extracts the
dominant color from your favicon,
if available, and uses it as the live
tile's background color. It uses
your site's HTML title tag for the
name of the tile.
If you don't have a favicon but
want to customize a Start Screen
tile for your site, you can get
customized code to make your site
stand out with a background color,
an icon image, and a tile name. Just
use this convenient wizard
provided by Microsoft. It offers
two lines of code that you can
paste within your site's HTML tag.
Also consider utilizing pinned site
notifications, through which you
can alert your visitors of new
messages, new content, or other
site-related updates via graphical
alert flags that appear on your
site's tile.
Design for flip-ahead browsing in
Internet Explorer
One new feature available only in
the app version (not the desktop
version) of Internet Explorer 10 for
Windows 8 is flip-ahead browsing .
This allows your visitors to explore
your website like a book or
magazine, clicking the Forward
button or swiping with their finger
to advance to the next page. This is
particularly useful for content like
multi-page articles, photo
slideshows, and blog posts.
Though the Internet Explorer app
tries to analyze your site and come
up with flip-ahead suggestions, you
can manually identify them within
your Web page code. Browse your
site in IE 10 on Windows 8 and use
the flip-ahead feature to see what
happens. It should automatically
detect obvious content, such as
multi-page articles with "next"
buttons or links. If you find flip
ahead doesn't provide your desired
content flow, refer to this
Microsoft guide on how to add the
code to your site's pages.
Customize your site's sharing
details
When visitors browse your website
using the Internet Explorer 10 app,
they can bring up the Charms bar
along the right edge of the
Windows 8 interface to share your
site with others via apps including
Mail and People.
By default, shared content will use
your site's HTML title tag as the
site name, along with your site's
HTML description tag and a
random image from the site.
Your website's default details may
be fine, but you can place
customizated code within your site
to specify exactly what you want to
appear when visitors share your
site with others via the Charms
bar. Refer to the Microsoft site for
the HTML tags you need to add.
Create Jump Lists for your site
In Windows 7, Microsoft added a
convenient feature called Jump
Lists . These allow you to right-click
on programs and websites pinned
to the Taskbar or Start Menu so
users can access shortcuts to
recent files, frequent locations and
common tasks. By default, if your
visitors pin your website to
Windows 7 or 8, they won't see any
Jump List shortcuts or tasks unless
you've added code to your site for
this purpose.
In Windows 8, Microsoft included
the same Jump List feature for the
Desktop Taskbar, and also added
Jump List functionality to the sites
you pin to its new Start Screen.
After clicking on a pinned site from
the Windows Start Screen, it opens
the site in the Internet Explorer
app. From there you can click the
pin icon on the bottom of the
Internet Explorer app to see a site's
Jump List, which is just like what's
shown in the Jump List of sites you
pin to the Windows 8 Desktop
Taskbar and Windows 7 Taskbar or
Start Menu.
On your customized Jump List you
can list up to five shortcuts to
specific URLs, each with its own
icon. Perhaps link to each of site's
main pages or to your social media
pages. You can even provide an RSS
feed to display a list of shortcuts
that are automatically updated,
such as your blog posts, Twitter
feed, or other content streams If
you haven't yet created a
customized Jump List for your
website, refer to our previous
article or use this wizard from
Microsoft .
Each website customization
discussed here includes a shortcut
to a Microsoft Web page or wizard.
For more details, check out the full
developer guides for Internet
Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer
10, and consider scanning your
website for compatibility issues as
well.