Another big week for the book, with lots of copy-editing and general cleaning up, plus some thoughts about what the cover design for Windows 8.1 Field Guide—and a related series of books—might look like.
Remember, we're charging just $2 for the book, and you can contribute in other ways as well. Check out my earlier post Buy Windows 8.1 Book! or the Windows 8.1 Book web site for the details.
This week's updates (with the newest posts at the top) include:
This is a minor update to the book in which I've cleaned up the "front matter," which is the stuff at the beginning of the book. I've added a legal page and made some other mostly formatting-related changes.
This update includes a copy-edited version of the PHOTOS chapter. I think I mentioned earlier that the Calendar chapter was the first I had written for the book. Actually, I believe it was this chapter. It's a bit rough, and dates back to a time where I had intended every task (where possible) to include both Modern and desktop solutions. This proved tedious and in the interest of keeping the book under 1000 pages, Rafael and I decided to focus on just the new stuff.
This update includes a copy-edited version of the SKYPE chapter.
This update includes a copy-edited version of the INTERNET EXPLORER chapter.
While Rafael and I have had a few conversations about potential cover designs for the book, we're also curious what you think. Once we hit on the "field guide" theme, it seemed like it might be a good idea to incorporate some kind of old-timey field guide-type look and feel into the cover design, if not the book itself. So I've been wondering what they might look like.
Here's another update, this time with a copy-edited CALENDAR chapter. This one was a bit interesting for two reasons. First, this was the first chapter I had written for the book, back in September 2013, and I was curious to see if the style was consistent. (Mostly, it was.) Second, I needed to replace a bunch of screenshots because sometime between September and now Microsoft fixed the inconsistent mini-app bar in this app: It used to be at the top of the app (weird) and is now where it belongs on the bottom. So the shots are all fixed.
Just finished copy-editing the MAIL chapter, and have also incorporated a few typo fixes from readers. (Always appreciated.) I'm about 230 pages into the edit, I guess. A few more to-do items added, the usual.
About 200 pages in, just finished copy-editing the APPS chapter. Again, nothing major, but a few to-do items related to consistency.
Another quickie copy-edited chapter done, this time DEVICES. Nothing major to report, but I've added a few potential to-do's to the list.
A bit more copyediting is done, this time to the FILES chapters. So I'm about 150 pages into the book. The FILES chapter focuses largely on the SkyDrive app and associated file picker interface and will need to be updated for the switchover to OneDrive. This isn't as simple as a global search and replace for the term "SkyDrive," since we'll need to address the change and of course some users will see SkyDrive in the UI for some time to come. More problematically, many screenshots will need to be reshot as well.
Here is another update to the book, which has now been copy-edited through the PERSONALIZE chapter, so about the first 130 pages or so. Nothing major to report. I've been making a few notes about standardizing language (Modern vs. Metro, for example) throughout the book but will do global searches for that stuff after the copy edit is over.
Here is another update to the book, which has now been copy-edited through the BASIC NAVIGATION chapter, so about the first 100 pages or so.
More soon...
