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

Chapter 11: Internet Explorer, sneak peek

I'm not ready to post the first version of Chapter 11: Internet Explorer, but here's a sneak peek at the topic/task list as it now stands. I should be able to post the first look at the actual chapter soon.

Find and launch

UI tour

The address bar is at the bottom of the screen to conserve screen space, and it won’t disappear when you switch to landscape view. The More menu — always just a tap away — is the single place to go for switching tabs, revisiting recently-viewed sites, accessing and adding to your favorites, pinning websites to the Start screen, sharing websites with others, finding text on a page, and accessing browser settings.

App bar -

Refresh + Address bar by default

Address bar suggests websites as you start to type, showing matches from your favorites, browsing history, and popular Bing searches.

More: Works in landscape mode. Multi-touch zoom.

Web-ready keyboard. dedicated “.com” key to reduce the number of characters you’ll have to type. You can tap and hold the “.com” key to choose from “.org,” “.edu”, or “.net.”

When you need to enter text on a webpage, the view will automatically zoom in to make it easier.

By default, Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone identifies itself to websites as a mobile browser so that sites can optimize their content for your phone.

Navigate to a web page

Refresh the current web page

Find something on the current web page

Save a picture from a web page to you phone

Search the web

From IE

With Bing

Tabs

Access tab UI

Add a new tab

View a tab

Delete a tab

Open a link in a new tab

Access recent web sites

Favorites

Access Favorites

Edit a Favorite

Delete a Favorite

Add a web page to Favorites

Watch a YouTube video

You can view YouTube videos just as easily, without having to download a standalone YouTube app.

Work with other Windows Phone features

Automatic recognition of street addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses on webpages.

Share a web page

More ways to share, enabled you to get links via NFC, and re-enabled Find-on-Page.

Share or copy a link

Share a link

NFC – receive and share

Copy and paste text from a web site

Pin a web page to the Start screen

Get quick access to favorite webpages by pinning Tiles for those pages to your Start screen.

Customize Internet Exploer

As you might expect, Internet Explorer Mobile offers a number of configurable options. These are available via Setting, which you can access in the app via More (“…”), Settings or by navigating to Settings, Applications, Internet Explorer.

Music, Videos and Podcasts 0.4

Here’s a long-overdue update to the Music, Videos and Podcasts chapter in Windows Phone Book. This update includes the Windows Phone content from Xbox Music Book and a lot of introductory material.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this chapter. When we last left it a month ago, I had basically completed the Videos and Podcasts sections but was waiting on pasting in the Windows Phone content from Xbox Music Book.

So that content is now in there, of course, and while doing so was pretty straightforward, it did require a bit of reordering and cleaning up. I also wrote the introductory material and decided to slightly expand the third party podcast app section. In short, it’s getting there.

So what’s left? A few short sections at the end: I need to finish up the third-party podcast app list and the Customize section. Right now there are still two holdovers from the old book style (Inside the app and Outside the app), but I’m going to see about just integrating that content in elsewhere in the chapter.

Hopefully there are just one or two more updates until this one is completed in first draft form. In the meantime, any feedback is appreciated.

Download Music, Videos and Podcasts 0.4

Download Windows Phone Book 0.022

Email 0.4

As promised, here’s an update to the first draft of the Email chapter in Windows Phone Book. This update adds a number of additional tasks, some of which were pointed out by readers.

Carl C. sent me a great email noting the following missing tasks/information:

• Pin individual folders to start screen
• When forwarding an email containing attachments, one must download the attachment(s) before forwarding, or else they will not reach the recipient
• The number next to a pinned email icon is not the same as unread emails
• The setup for generic IMAP/POP email accounts is problematic

Looking over the app, I also spotted a few additional missing bits:

• Voice-to-text: You can “speak” the subject line and body of email messages
• Calendar integration: You can accept meeting requests in Mail

There are a few other additional tidbits, plus I moved some content around so that the order of the tasks made a bit more sense. (For some reason, one of the email folder tasks was separated from the other two.)

With the understanding that the word “complete” will always have quotes around it, here’s another stab at a “complete” first draft of the chapter. I’ll be moving on to the Music, Videos, and Podcasts chapter (except an update to that soon) and then the Internet Explorer and Games chapters.

Download Email 0.4

Download Windows Phone Book 0.021