The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls continues our experiment with providing an entire book inside an application. The application contains the entire contents of this “Idiot’s Guide” book published by Penguin USA. Every one of the 200+ pages are included, along with formatting specific to the Hiptop/Sidekick family of devices. This book, as you’d expect, is definitely written for men looking for women.The splash screen, with the famous Idiot’s Guide logo:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls splash screen

To quickly navigate, a folder view allows us to choose among chapter sections:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls folder view

The text of the book is formatted for the device, with page breaks at the same point on the device as they occur in the print version of the book:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls text

 

The “Idiot’s Guide” sidebars are included:

 

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls text

In the book, a range of specific information is provided, including conversation ideas:

 

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls text

The standard device navigation keys work, so menu-wheel, alt-up/down, send/end call, and @/space/. navigate like they do in many other applications.

Bookmarks can be created at any point in the text:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls new bookmark

They can be used later on from any place in the book, or while browsing the chapter folder view. A last-viewed bookmark is also available when we’re looking at the chapter folder view:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls last viewed bookmark

This location is saved, so we can jump back to our spot later on.

The default font size is the same size as that used in the email client:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls smaller font

The font size can be enlarged slightly on Sidekick/Hiptop 2, 3, and iD devices:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls larger font

On Sidekick/Hiptop LX & Slide devices, the larger screens make for even easier reading. We can choose among a variety of font sizes:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls LX font selection

So the same passage on an LX with a really small font looks like this:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls LX small font

The book can also be read at a much larger font size:

The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Getting Girls LX large font

The wide-screen LX really makes books quite readable! The range of font sizes possible really pays off.

If you’ve got ideas/comments on books or genres that you’d like to see on your device, drop us a line!