IE9 User? You’ll Love ‘Pinning’ Your Blog
If you use the new Internet Explorer 9 beta (IE9) on Windows 7 and have a blog on WordPress.com, you should definitely check out some cool new features.
First, not only do the charts on your stats page load faster — thanks to new canvas element support in IE9 — but each WordPress.com site also includes a high-res icon for your browser, taskbar, or shortcuts. Once you start using IE9, you’ll find this icon comes in handy when you want to “pin” a blog.
Pinning? Yes, Pinning!
Wait, just what is pinning, you may be asking? It’s actually quite simple and a lot like bookmarking but on your computer instead of in the browser. Once pinned, you can launch your blog right from your Windows taskbar. A handy context menu lets you access some of your most common tasks such as adding a new post or moderating comments, with a single click. You also can pin a friend’s blog to stay up-to-date on their latest posts.
To get started, the first thing you need to do is download Internet Explorer 9 while using Windows 7. Let’s take a look at how things unfold from there:
Pinning Your Blog
When you sign in to your blog, you can pin your own site and get extra tasks that make blogging easier and faster. A logged-in user can quickly access links to their dashboard to write a new post, moderate comments, upload a new file, or view blog statistics. (Each task only appears if the user has that task’s capability, such as site administrator’s.) A custom list also displays up to 5 latest posts for the current blog context.
You can pin someone else’s blog, too. When you do, an icon appears that lets you subscribe to the blog feed, signup for a free blog, read Freshly Pressed, and access WordPress.com Support and forums.
How to Pin
This is simple: Just visit a blog in a IE9 tab, grab the tab, and drop it onto the taskbar at the bottom of your desktop. When you pin a site it will either show up as a large WordPress logo or as your own Blavatar if you’ve uploaded one.
P.S.: You can learn more about IE9 on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer blog (hosted on WordPress.com!).
Sep 17th at 1:12 pm
wow, that will looks really cool. 8)
Sep 17th at 1:14 pm
hey this is awesome!
Sep 17th at 1:30 pm
That is an excellent resource for IE users. Unfortunately I don’t think I know any IE users. Most people I know use Firefox.
Sep 17th at 1:37 pm
Seems pretty cool, will try out once we get IE9 at work (since we just got IE7 I expect it will be a while). Unfortunately for home/personal use, I’m a mac user and there’s no IE for Mac so I can’t try these out
Sep 17th at 2:40 pm
Hi Joy.
Fantastic post. Thank you for sharing.
LCS
Sep 17th at 2:50 pm
That’s kind of cool. Almost makes me want to download IE9. FF is kind of bloated bc of all of the add-ons and extensions. Don’t use Chrome.
Sep 17th at 2:51 pm
I haven’t taken the leap into IE9 yet, and didn’t really care before, but that pinning thing sounds interesting.
Sep 17th at 3:03 pm
Ok. Great post. But I’m not in big love with IE9 nor do I like the way WordPress.com is *indirectly* promoting IE9 by firstly putting it on the front page tagging as Sponsored Post and now promoting it from its official blog.
But I believe even Google begins to promote IE9, people will not roll back to that thing anymore, at least as long there is Firefox and Chrome [I have bad experience with Chrome though. But many people find it very useful.]
Sep 17th at 3:14 pm
wow!!! thanks for letting us know! I’ve already done this with Facebook and I just made it with my wordpress.com blog.
Fantastic!!!
Sep 17th at 3:30 pm
This may come in handy. Thank you.
Sep 17th at 3:41 pm
Oh my! That is so cool!
Sep 17th at 4:03 pm
Thanks for the info. I’ll update my PC and get back to your post! Thanks again!
Sep 17th at 4:05 pm
Haha. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to IE. But this is great for the majority of user who do!
Sep 17th at 4:20 pm
wishing I wasn’t using windowsXP
Sep 17th at 4:23 pm
A very useful tool
Thanks..
And I did notice that the stats charts were loading quite quickly too!
Sep 17th at 4:51 pm
Does this work on other windows computers like Windows XP?
Sep 17th at 6:18 pm
Microsoft system requirements state that IE9 requires Windows 7 or Windows Vista SP2 (with Platform Update). Windows XP is not supported.
Sep 17th at 4:52 pm
Unfortunately, I am still using Windows XP
Sep 17th at 4:58 pm
This is good. It may even make me want to use IE again! Hope it’s fast too!
Sep 17th at 5:04 pm
Great feature.
Sep 17th at 5:57 pm
Even so I still will not use IE9.
Sep 17th at 6:03 pm
This is awesome! I’ll check it out when we download IE9! I would love having my blog right there all the time. Makes procrastinating so much easier. XD
Thanks WordPress!
Sep 17th at 6:08 pm
That’s amazingly cool future centric feature for the WP users. Thanks to both IE9 and WP producers!
Sep 17th at 6:48 pm
i use mac how sad:(
Sep 17th at 7:02 pm
I have some bugs using IE9 and WordPress. I can’t write new posts. I can’t place the cursor in the box to type. But I love the jumplists. They are really cool.
Sep 17th at 7:40 pm
Likes the IE9 pinning feature, especially for the WordPress blogs I publish and administer. Thank you for pointing out this new option Joy
Sep 17th at 8:13 pm
Doesn’t work for me just pins a shortcut to my blog on the taskbar that when clicked on opens IE9 and loads up my blog.
Sep 17th at 8:23 pm
This’ll be a useful feature to be sure. Thanks!
Sep 17th at 8:32 pm
Didn’t know about IE9 till you mentioned it here! I’m off to scrump it from somewhere. IE8 is a pest for locking up. Thanks:-)
Sep 17th at 8:36 pm
Ugh! I still can’t let go of Fire Fox.
Sep 17th at 9:14 pm
I am good with Win XP and FF.
Sep 17th at 9:19 pm
This rocks! Great work between WP and IE9 teams!
I downloaded IE9 yesterday and am enjoying it a lot so far. 
Sep 17th at 10:17 pm
Now that was a fast response to the new features with IE9. Good job guys! No need to worry about implementation tricks on my end. 8^D
Sep 17th at 10:53 pm
Nice “pinning” feature. Too bad I have to switch back to Windows XP (IE9 is not supported on XP).
Sep 18th at 12:01 am
Try Firefox– you’ll love “not having a crappy browser”.
Sep 18th at 12:16 am
sick i wanna give it a try sometime
Sep 18th at 12:35 am
Finally something that IE 9 can do haha
Sep 18th at 1:15 am
It’s a nice feature but I keep finding IE9 starts fast and looks impressive, then slows down and becomes unresponsive and unreliable after about an hour or so of use. Unfortunately, though, since the launch of IE9 I’ve found that WordPress has become unreliable in my browser of choice, Google Chrome, where before it worked perfectly fine…!
Sep 18th at 1:20 am
nice idea right there hope to see more tricks…..good luck!
Sep 18th at 2:44 am
yea this a cool feature of pinning pages to your windows 7 taskbar.
Sep 18th at 2:57 am
Not good. Supporting IE9 only features which are unlikely to be accepted by other browsers is not a good development.
This guy explains why: http://camendesign.com/blog/stop_this_madness
Sep 18th at 3:09 am
IE is VASTLY inferior to ANY other web browser. Try the acid 3 test (http://acid3.acidtests.org/) on FireFox or Google Chrome and you’ll see that it’ll pass the test whereas all versions of IE fail.
Sep 18th at 4:06 am
Wow! That is awesome! But not for me because I’m using Google Chrome. Kekeke.
Sep 18th at 4:50 am
That will save some time!
Sep 18th at 6:49 am
Yes. Cool feature… But I am with FireFox
Sep 18th at 7:52 am
Cool feature. Will definitely use it.
Sep 18th at 8:50 am
Well I certainly will not be using this feature, as I have a MacBook, though I must say this is a pretty neat feature.
Sep 18th at 9:13 am
Internet Explorer 9 is great. Those of you dismissing it without even trying should get out of their sheltered world. This feature is a must-have!
Sep 18th at 1:38 pm
wow amazing, but it’s not good news for users running windows Xp
Sep 18th at 2:59 pm
Very coool. Now if only I had Windows 7!
Sep 18th at 3:38 pm
IE9? Wow, are there still people around who use IE?
Sep 18th at 6:41 pm
Cool feature but not cool enough to make me want to install IE9.
Sep 19th at 12:03 am
Really like the ideas Word Press keeps coming up with – I have only been blogging for a few months but it always seems something new is happening…thanks for all the Innovations
Sep 19th at 3:04 am
This seems like a really cool feature! It will make Posting on my Site way more efficient and faster
Thank you.
Sep 19th at 5:28 am
I have Windows 7, so I tried it. It pinned my site OK, but IE9 kept crashing on me, and I was unable to work on my blog.. I deleted it, and am back to IE8.
Sep 19th at 6:30 am
It’s a battle for market share for sure. According to W3Schools, the vast majority of MS users still use XP.
Right now, I’m sticking to Windows7 and Chrome on my netbook (and thanks for the tip about the pinning function, works great) and XP and IE8 on my desktop.
Sep 19th at 2:26 pm
unfortunately does not support windows xp, very poor
Sep 19th at 7:05 pm
Nifty app. Perhaps consider making this feature for Google Chrome?
Sep 20th at 3:31 pm
Site Pinning is a feature that’s unique to IE9 right now.
Sep 20th at 12:27 am
add a cup of peanut butter and I might eat this.
Sep 20th at 2:17 am
Sorry, but I love my Firefox and not change it for anything, much less for Explorer
Sep 20th at 8:01 am
That looks awesome. Hoping you can show the love to Chrome and Firefox users too.
Sep 20th at 5:36 pm
win 7 + ie9 = future.
Sep 20th at 6:28 pm
Sounds great. Every little bit helps!
Sep 20th at 7:28 pm
Some great features – personally will be sticking to Google Chrome though as it seems to be about the fastest and also has some fantastic features. I would recommend trying it out. Opera’s also very good. I think it’s a shame that a lot of people don’t even realise there are other browsers out there and a few that are as good if not better than IE in my opinion. Great article though – thanks for sharing.
Sep 21st at 2:07 am
! Hey, think this is a great tool for IE9 users.
Sep 21st at 2:16 am
nice app, looking forward for firefox version!
Sep 21st at 7:45 am
Been playing with the pinning with IE9 Beta and Win7, however I’ve noticed that although the dashboard for WordPress loads faster, the actual main post window has an issue with accepting and saving text. Had to turn on compatability mode to workaround this.
Sep 21st at 8:42 am
i didn’t know it works with WordPress. That’s so cool. I’ll try it when I get home. Thanks for the tip!
Sep 21st at 9:17 am
What about us non Windows 7 users? Anything new coming for the rest of us?
Sep 21st at 11:28 am
I so like this feature on my laptop… I don’t think I can use it on my Desktop since it still using windowXP
Sep 21st at 3:12 pm
This is ‘nifty’, but I wouldn’t say it was ‘awesome’. You can do something similar using Google Chrome – simply navigate to your blog, then from the options menu select tools then create application shortcuts… and you’ll be given an option to pin your blog to the Win 7 taskbar. It’ll even sit in its own standalone window, rather than just opening in the browser as it does in IE9. I use this for my GMail account, which gives me a ‘standalone’ e-mail application without having to run Outlook or similar.
I’ll grant, this doesn’t give you some of the menu options such as accessing browser stats etc., but you’re only one click away from them anyway.
Sep 21st at 5:38 pm
Great post and tip. I actually posted about this just the other day regarding IE9 – which has some very cool other features – http://teabrooke.com/2010/09/16/top-5-favorite-features-of-ie9-beta/. And you can actually do the same type of “pinning” in Chrome, which I blogged about here: http://teabrooke.com/2010/09/19/how-to-pin-websites-in-google-chrome/.
Allows for such quick and easy access to the sites you use frequently throughout the day – like our blogs!
Sep 22nd at 4:53 am
You know what would be aweeeesome? The possibility of creating short posts right from the jumplist. Not sure if win7′s taskbar capabilities go that far tho. Still good thing you’re working with IE9, looks like a fine browser.
Sep 22nd at 10:26 am
What is this IE-thing?
)
Sep 23rd at 5:00 pm
Please don’t encourage people to use Internet Explorer. That thing is a morass of ugly security problems.
Sep 25th at 8:12 pm
Yes it works great!
Sep 26th at 12:09 am
Never used IE in my present life. Maybe in my next life. However, nice to care about minorities, WP
Sep 27th at 12:09 am
Downloaded it, pinned it, but when I tried to post;
cursor will not move
does not automatically save periodically
cannot use bold, italic, etc.
So, I use ie9 to check stats and firefox for posting.—not very helpful!
Sep 27th at 1:34 am
good job, altough i’m not using IE since 2007! hehe
Sep 27th at 2:38 pm
does this work on mac?
Sep 27th at 3:17 pm
this is a great feature!
Sep 28th at 5:32 am
I hope I’ll see something like this with Chrome too
Sep 28th at 7:27 am
Oh
IE only? What about Linux bloggers?
Sep 28th at 2:23 pm
@monica – it’s not quite the same, but you can ‘pin’ your WordPress blog using Chrome. Click the ‘spanner’ while you’ve got your blog open, go to Tools and then click Create Application Shortcuts.
This’ll make your blog in to its own ‘application’, which you can then pin in Win 7′s task bar. You won’t get quite the functionality that seems to work with IE9, like clicking straight to stats etc., but it’s very useful and what I use. Especially as, for some reason, I can’t write in my blog using IE9…
Sep 28th at 3:32 pm
This does look really cool! I like the fold down menu…awesome!
Sep 28th at 4:52 pm
I’ve run into a few minor issues with IE9, but we must remember, it is only in Beta testing at the moment.
Sep 28th at 10:19 pm
Anyone else think it’s weird how WordPress and Microsoft are in bed with each other these days? http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/welcome-windows-live-spaces-bloggers/
Makes me uneasy. Microsoft seems to always find a way to leave their “partners” worse off than they were before…
Sep 29th at 2:21 pm
Cool….but I can do this in Firefox and the Mac OS already.
Sep 29th at 3:15 pm
I love pinning WP! :3
Sep 30th at 4:31 am
Fantastic!
Sep 30th at 9:18 am
Pinned ya!