Windows Phone 8 Field Guide Version 1.07

Here's a long-overdue and possibly final update to Paul Thurrott's Windows Phone 8, which has been renamed to Windows Phone 8 Field Guide to make it consistent with my other recent books, Windows 8.1 Field Guide and Xbox Music Field Guide. This is a fairly major update, but only from a formatting perspective.

I don't want to get too bogged down in the details of this, mostly because it's so boring. But the short version is that I did a lousy formatting job on the original version of this book, something that I cleaned up for the subsequent titles mentioned above. I'd been meaning to clean it up for a long time, but it's so tedious to do so, so I put it off.

However, Windows Phone 8.1 is coming. And I want to base the next edition of this book, Windows Phone 8.1 Field Guide, on this initial version. And that cleanup job has to happen sometime.

At first, I figured I'd just use the cleaned up version for v2 (8.1). But in working my way through this over the past week, I realized I could at least pop out a final update for the original book. This might be it.

Now, you may recall that I originally intended to update this book with information about Nokia Maps and Drive+, and possibly some other content. (I did provide updates for Windows Phone 8 Update 2 and Update 3.) But I also started work on Windows 8.1 Field Guide, which was of course a major effort. So that stuff will need to wait for the 8.1 book, sorry.

I'll be posting more about Windows 8.1 Field Guide when Microsoft announces the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview next week. For now, here is a cleaned up version of the Windows Phone 8 book for you to enjoy. And there are some major changes, formatting-wise.

First, all of the headings are now correct and in line with the other books.

Second, I've resized every single full-screen screenshot from 3-inches horizontally to 2-inches. This is a big deal because, when you think about it, these shots are all portrait-oriented and very tall. So the savings are incredible. The book went from 655 pages to 536 pages. It's much more manageable.

Also here's a fun fact: This book is almost exactly the same length (word count wise) as Windows 8.1 Field Guide. That latter book comes in at 104,454 words (currently), whereas this Windows Phone book is 104,324 words. That's crazy close.

Feedback is always appreciated. But it's time to turn my attention to the next release.

Download Paul Thurrott's Windows Phone 8 1.07 (536 pages) PDF | MOBI | EPUB

Note: Remember, MOBI format works on Kindle and ePub works on Nook.