Favorites access in Metro

[Joshie]

I know most users don't take advantage of this functionality, but for me, bookmarks and favorites are like my start menu to the web. I've always enabled the Favorites function of the start menu in Windows 7 and prior, and I've gone so far as using Xmarks to keep IE favorites synced with my other browser bookmarks so it stays up to date.

With the push to web apps and a stronger reliance on the web as a platform, it only ever struck me as natural that bookmarks would become just as important as the All Programs menu to the user who doesn't want to rely on search for every site they visit regularly. We've even seen the ability to pin sites to the taskbar because the people building our browsers realize what the web has become (and yet favorites on the start menu continue to be disabled by default).

But now I'm running Windows 8, and I love learning all the little tricks, but it strikes me that bookmarks/favorites have become only more alienated by the OS. Favorites aren't a part of start menu search, and I haven't been able to find any way to have them represented by the OS short of creating a folder on the task bar.

Is there something I'm missing? Or has this just become one of those forgotten functions?

[Wyn6]

Depends. Are you talking IE10 Metro or IE10 Desktop?

On the desktop you can still have a favorites bar, manage your favorites and what not. In Metro, you pin faves to start AND they appear anytime you click into the address bar on IE10 Metro.

The only problem with pinning faves to the Start Screen I can see is if you have a considerable amount. More than 30 for example (I have 13 pinned currently). The category can start to balloon up fast. A solution to this might be a tile which acts as a folder. So, you could pin the News or Sports folders to the Start Screen then pin various sites within either.

Hope that somewhat answers your question. If not, clarify and somebody smarter than me will give it a go. ;)