Next Chapter: Games

I spent a bit of time developing a structure for the next chapter, Games, yesterday. No serious writing yet, so I’ll wait a day or two on the first release. But I wanted to quickly step through how I see this one going.

First, this should be one of the shortest chapters in the book. Most of the game-related activities that occur on Windows Phone occur in the games themselves, and I won’t be writing about individual games.

Second, I’m not sure if I want/need to cover Xbox SmartGlass in this chapter. From a game-playing perspective, SmartGlass so far doesn’t offer much. Yes, you can interact in small ways with Xbox 360-based games. But even second screen titles—of which I don’t believe there are any yet—don’t have much to do with gaming on the phone per se. I’m curious if anyone has thoughts about that. I’ll leave it in for now.

Here’s a rough structure of what I have so far:

Understand Xbox LIVE

Get additional Xbox Games apps

  - Xbox Extras and Xbox SmartGlass

Find and launch the Games hub

Tour of the Games hub

Find games in Xbox Games Store

  - Free, Try, Buy – link to Apps/Store chapter

Play games

  - Xbox LIVE games vs. other games

  - Send and receive game requests

View and configure your online persona

  - Avatar – poke him tip

  - Gamertag

  - Gamerscore

  - Achievements

  - Launch Xbox Extras to customize your avatar

Interact with your Xbox friends

  - See friends that are online

  - Read and respond to a message

  - Send a new message

  - Send and receive friend requests

Customize the Games hub

I should be able to post the first release in the next day or so. I expect this one to happen quickly.

Internet Explorer Chapter is Complete

Well. That was quicker than even I expected: I had a couple of extra hours to kill today, so I used them finish the first draft of Chapter 11, Internet Explorer.

This third update to the Internet Explorer chapter fills out the following sections

• (Short) introduction
• Tour of IE Mobile
• Share information from web pages
• Watch a YouTube video

I also moved some stuff around (like the Save a picture from a web page section) and added a few more bits here and there (like the web keyboard and progress bar info in the navigation section).

As always the word “complete” has quotes around it; this is never really complete. But I think it’s in a pretty good place and will be moving on to other chapters.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Download Internet Explorer 0.3

Download Windows Phone Book 0.026

Internet Explorer 0.2

Here’s a second update to the Internet Explorer chapter for Windows Phone Book. This update adds three sections of content to what is proving to be a very straightforward chapter that is now about two-thirds complete.

The following sections have been added in this update:

• Tabs (including access tabs, delete a tab, create a new tab, open a link in a new tab, access tabs from the address bar, and open links from other apps in a new tab)
• Recent (including access Recent, manage recent sites)
• Favorites (including access Favorites, edit a Favorite, delete a Favorite, add a web page to Favorites, access Favorite web pages from the address bar, and access Favorites from the address bar button)
• Pin a web page to the Start screen

I’d guess this chapter is about two-thirds complete (in first draft form, that is). What’s left? Sections like the introduction, UI tour, sharing, and watch a YouTube video. Should be quick: Like email, this topic is very straightforward.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Download Internet Explorer 0.2

Download Windows Phone Book 0.025

Internet Explorer 0.1

Here’s a first peek at the Internet Explorer chapter for Windows Phone Book. In this early version, I’ve got a rough layout of the chapter with the expected list of tasks filled in, and have written about a third of it.

As with the Email chapter, this one seems to be very straightforward and should be completed very quickly.

The following sections are done: Web page navigation (manual navigation, stop, refresh), Find text on the current web page, Save a picture from a web page to you phone, Search the web (from IE, from Bing, change the browser search engine), and Customize Internet Explorer Mobile. I’ve written a few other small bits here and there as well.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Download Internet Explorer 0.1

Download Windows Phone Book 0.024

Music, Videos and Podcasts is Complete

Windows Phone Book Chapter 14, Music, Videos and Podcasts, is now complete in first-draft form. I’ve added this chapter to the in-progress Windows Phone Book document and will now move on to a new chapter, about Internet Explorer.

This small update includes just two changes: A quickie addition to the list of third party podcast tools and a look at Music + Videos Settings. Suffice to say I just want to put this one behind me.

Feedback is always appreciated. But I’m going to be really disappointed if there are any major changes required to this one. :)

Download Music, Videos and Podcasts 0.5

Download Windows Phone Book 0.023