Windows 8 Jump Lists for Metro Apps - Secondary Tiles

Jump lists have not only survived in Windows 8, but also evolved, while being tailored to fit Metro apps in addition to traditional desktop applications.

According to Marina Dukhon, a senior program manager lead on the Core Experience team, Microsoft built on the concept of Jump Lists in an attempt to adapt the feature to Metro style apps.

In Windows 7, Jump Lists were associated with items pinned to the Taskbar, including, but not limited to applications, and they functioned much like mini Start Menus.

Essentially, Jump Lists allowed users to perform a variety of tasks without having to open program menus, navigate away from the desktop, and perform additional actions in a very simple manner. They’re a very powerful feature, which the software giant worked to preserve in Windows 8, while also focusing on enriching opportunities for app developers.

“Instead of building on and promoting file structure, our view for Metro style apps is more app-centric. The apps know better what kind of content they host: whether it’s an RSS feed, an album, a score tracker, or a person’s profile, and they can do a much better job exposing quick access to this content to the user,” Dukhon added.

“This content doesn’t involve files on the system that Windows knows about – it’s knowledge within the app. We’ve expanded the jump list concept to provide semantically richer links.”

Tying Jump Lists to Metro apps required a bit of thinking outside the box, and going beyond the file centric functionality of this feature.

This is how secondary tiles were born, evolved Jump Lists that are app-centric instead of being file-centric.

What secondary tiles do is that they allow users to create Windows 8 Start Screen tiles for a part of a Metro app, instead of the entire application.

“With this feature, any Metro style app can allow a user to pin a new tile to their Start screen that can navigate them to any part of the app. The tile can even be live, providing updates for that specific content,” Dukhon explained.

“There's no reason a file-centric app would not provide this same functionality for files. We know from usage data that people are fairly meticulous and deliberate in reusing common documents—MRUs composed of pinned files are extremely popular in Office apps and on the taskbar. The support we provide for developers makes this straightforward.”

Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.