more IE9 RC issues – Tale of two Internet shortcuts

Can you spot any difference at the following two Internet shortcuts on my desktop?

I can’t either. Note that the two files have the same “name”, but different file extension (invisible when using default Windows Explorer folder view settings). The one uses “.url” (classic Internet Explorer webpage shortcut), while the other one, created by Internet Explorer 9 RC when I drag-dropped a page’s icon from the address bar onto my desktop, uses the file extension “.website”. That’s why although they seem to the user to have the same name, they can still co-exist on the same folder (the desktop).

However, there are important differences on how these two Internet shortcuts behave. If you open the .url one with IE9 RC you get the window at the 1st image shown below, whereas if you open the “.website” one, you get the window at the 2nd image shown below. Notice the difference on the address bar? The Back and Forward buttons now have a different color (they get their color from the page icon somehow, maybe calculating the dominant color or something from there) and there’s also the page icon showing up at the start of the address bar (can click on it to go back to this page if you’ve navigated away from it).

Note that when you drag-drop the webpage icon from IE9 RC address bar onto the desktop you also do notice a different behaviour (than you were used to) from IE9, in that it closes that page and opens it up in a new window, with that modified address bar, 2nd image as shown below.

Right-clicking each of those two files (the .url and the .website ones), and selecting “Properties”, you get the displays shown below on the left and right sides respectively. You’ll notice that the “.url” file is called an “Internet Shortcut”, whereas the “.website” one is called a “Pinned Site Shortcut”.

Note that the “.url” file’s “Properties” action takes you directly to a tab other than the “General” one, called “Web Document” (a custom property page) with more info on the URL, a tab that is missing (I’d consider this a bug) from the “.website” file properties dialog. That way you can’t edit the URL from the properties dialog, neither can you set a “Shortcut key” for launching the shortcut using the keyboard.

Right-clicking the “.url” file and selecting “Send to > Notepad” (assuming you have installed “SendTo tools” or similar utility, or created a shortcut to “Notepad.exe” at your SendTo folder), you see the following contents:

[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/14/useconomy-usemployment
IconFile=http://www.guardian.co.uk/favicon.ico
IconIndex=1

Right-clicking the “.website” file and selecting “Send to > Notepad” (assuming you have installed Send To tools or created a Notepad shortcut at your SendTo folder), you see the following contents:

[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop4=31,The revenge of trickle-down economics | Richard Wolff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Prop3=19,2
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/14/useconomy-usemployment
IDList=
IconFile=http://www.guardian.co.uk/favicon.ico
IconIndex=1
[{9F4C2855-9F79-4B39-A8D0-E1D42DE1D5F3}]
Prop5=8,Microsoft.Website.CF19EB85.7C0F63A3
[{A7AF692E-098D-4C08-A225-D433CA835ED0}]
Prop5=3,0
Prop2=65,2C0000000000000001000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF30000005900000085030000D4010000C6
Prop6=3,1

I find the new IE9 RC behaviour non-intuitive, esp. the action of closing old tab and popping up a new window when you drag-drop the page icon from the address bar onto the desktop. This violates the UI design principle of “least surprise” for the user.

Moreover it refreshes the page when doing that (which can result in loss of data if you were filling-in something online and hadn’t submitted yet – hope it does at least respect webpages that use closing event handler to warn the user they haven’t saved and allow them to cancel the page closing).

You can see more info on Pinned Site Shortcuts at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/dd797411 (as a reader of my previous blog post pointed out).