Jump Lists is a new feature that can make it a whole lot quicker to find (jump back) to where you recently have been. A replacement for XP’s ‘My Recent Documents’ - Not entirely true but read on for some of the Jump List features.
If you read my article: “Windows 7 RC for XP users - How to find your way around Part 2” you will know that a number of the tips involved “Pining” the Control Panel to the Task Bar and how to locate commonly used items, for example ‘Device Manager’. After Pining the Control Panel and accessing the Control using the pinned icon a few times a jump list will now contain a list of each control panel feature you have used.
Accessing the Jump List: Simply right click on the pinned Control Panel icon and you will see a list (similar to XP MRU list) of where you have been. Click on a listed item and you automatically “Jump” to that item.
Pinning the Jumper: If fact if you find yourself either frequently using an item in the jump list or just simply want easy access you can pin it to the top of the Jump List. To do this, simply highlight an item in the list and click on the ‘Stick Pin’ or Highlight and select ‘Pin to this list’. Right click a pinned item to unpin or remove from the MRU list.
IE8 Jumps: After visiting several sites right click on the IE8 icon located next to the Start (Orb) button. If you don’t see a jump list then try this trick, Start/Internet Explorer/Send to/Desktop. Now after visiting various web sites you should see the jump list start to populate. Unfortunately the jump list stops at 8 entries and after removing a few sites from the jump list it may or may not start to add new sites you visit. Chalk this one up as a potential bug.
Number of items displayed in the Jump Lists: You can increase or decrease the number of items displayed by right clicking on the Task Bar and selecting ‘Properties’. Next click on the ‘Start Menu’ tab and click ‘Customize…”, then at the bottom of the ‘Customize Start Menu’ window adjust the size of the ‘Number of items to display in Jump Lists:’. Next click ‘OK’, ‘Apply’ and then ‘OK’ to exit out. Now look at the jump list, you should all those web sites you visited recently included in the list.
Turn a Jump List item into a Short Cut: Google may be your favorite search engine, but you don’t want it as your home page. Open the Jump List and drag the Google from the list to your Desktop.
Notepad: Open Notepad and pin it to your Taskbar. Create a document and exit, right click on the Notepad icon in the taskbar and with a single click you can jump to the notepad document you just created.
Wordpad: Wordpad also supports jump lists the same as Notepad.
Paint: Paint also supports jump lists.
Not all applications may be able to make use of a Jump List but its worth trying you favorite software application, it just make your tasks a whole lot easier.