December 23, 2009

Behold the Pushpin

Filed under: Main — Tags: — Dan Gookin @ 12:01 am

pushpin
A graphical computer goober you’re gonna have to get used to is the pushpin. It’s showing up all over the place.

As with its real-life counterpart, the pushpin is used to make one thing stick to another. For the computer, the pushpin is used to save items in a list, such as a list of files.

For example, consider the recent file list from Word:

recent-files.word

The pushpin icons appear on the right side of the file list. By clicking a pushpin, you make an item in the list “stick.” So, from above, if you click the pushpin by teen stoner movie.docx, then that item stays on the list until you click the pushpin again.

I first witnessed pushpins when using a Sunstation once. That memory is vague. I do, however, remember seeing them in a Linux distro once upon a time. I though the pushpin was unique, but I don’t remember using them much.

You’ll find pushpins all over, especially in Windows 7: The Start menu now features pushpins on the recently-opened file lists. In fact, I like the pushpin metaphor in Windows 7 especially. For example, the old Quick Launch toolbar is gone and now, logically, you merely pushpin things to the taskbar. That makes so much more sense.

Administrative Note: There will be no blog post on December 25. Merry Christmas everyone!

4 Comments

  1. I’m slightly concerned by some of those documents… but anyways, I do agree with you, the whole pinning metaphor works quite well, and it makes sense, which is what we need these days with some of the noobs using computers (no offence to any, of course, but some are quite bad). I believe Office 2007 uses the Pins on it’s Recent files list: also clever is when you click the pin the pin sticks in, which also makes sense.

    Comment by Douglas — December 23, 2009 @ 6:10 am

  2. Those are documents I used to write my Word 2010 book! 😀

    Comment by admin — December 23, 2009 @ 8:25 am

  3. BTW, I actually used Word 2010 to write the Word 2010 book, which is unusual. Normally I install beta software on my test computer and write on another system. Over the years I’ve found that to be really stable. For Word 2010, however, I was going to be out of town for Thanksgiving. So I gingerly installed the beta on my laptop, replacing Word 2007. It worked! There were some bugs, but I didn’t lose any documents and everything stayed compatible.

    There is only one thing pinned to my start menu in Windows 7: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2! 😛

    Comment by admin — December 23, 2009 @ 8:27 am

  4. I don’t have anything pinned to my Start menu yet (I’ve only had a Windows 7 install for about three days now), but I have a few programs pinned to my taskbar which I tend to use every time I use the computer.

    Comment by Douglas — December 24, 2009 @ 3:40 am

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