- Understanding NOOK Gestures
- Setting Up and Registering Your NOOK
- Orienting Yourself to Your NOOK
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Orienting Yourself to Your NOOK
Now orient yourself to the NOOK and the basic navigational features. You won’t get the details about putting items on it and so on in the following sections, but you’ll get there eventually. This is simply to orient you to common locations you revisit often in this book.
The Welcome Back Screen
After you set up your NOOK, whenever it goes to sleep or powers off, whenever you wake it up or power it back on, you must unlock it. This occurs on the Welcome Back screen. If the NOOK is asleep, pressing the Home button starts the Welcome Back screen. If you power the NOOK on, after it completes the start sequence, you go to the Welcome Screen.
From the Welcome Back screen, you can select the profile you want to start using (profiles are covered in Chapter 11, “Creating and Using Profiles and Your NOOK Today”). Click the icon of the profile and drag it toward the unlock icon in the middle. (The arrow from the profile icon points you in the correct direction.) If you set up a lock sequence, enter the PIN and tap OK. The screen that appears is the Home Screen.
Home Screen
This is the screen that appears after you unlock the NOOK. The Home screen is a central location, and you interact with it a lot. The screen is divided into several sections (see Figure 1.4):
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Figure 1.4. The Home screen.
- Status bar: This is the top of the screen. You see whatever you name your NOOK (Patrick’s NOOK in Figure 1.4). Also, you see notifications in the middle of the screen. On the right side, you see the current time, Wi-Fi connectivity, settings (the gear icon), and battery monitor.
- Profile: This is the icon or image, the date, and a welcome greeting on the left side of the screen just below the status bar. You use this to change profiles outside of the Welcome Back screen.
- Your NOOK Today: This takes you to the Your NOOK Today screen (covered next).
- Active Shelf: This is a carousel of large icons of recently accessed items, new downloads and purchases, and so on. You can scroll through the Active Shelf by swiping your finger left or right across it. Tap one of the icons to launch the app, magazine, book, and such.
- Pages: You have five pages on the Home screen to do with as you please. The Home screen is the middle of the five (you can see which page you are on by looking at the dots immediately below the notifications in the status bar; the white dot is the current page). On these pages you can add apps, books, and more for quick access.
- Launch buttons: These are Library, Apps, Web, Email, and Shop. Tapping these launches new screens. Depending on the profile, some of these Launch buttons may not be visible.
- Search box: You can tap in here and begin typing for something you’re searching for. This is an easy way to access your content.
- Quick Corner: By default, the Quick Corner action is the Recent Drawer. However, you can set it to be Continue Reading. The Recent Drawer icon is a filled in square overlapping the outline of a square. The Continue Reading icon is a spread open book with a clock on the bottom right.
If you press and hold an empty area of the Home screen, the Add to Pages screen appears. From here, you have a variety of options for accessing your content.
Recent Drawer
If your Quick Corner is set up for the Recent Drawer, if you tap the icon, the Home screen goes dark, and the bottom third of the screen presents a scrollable list of the 50 most recently used and accessed apps, videos, books, and so on (see Figure 1.5). When you tap Recent Drawer, you also have a magnifying glass to open a search page. If you tap the Recent Drawer icon again, it closes the Recent Drawer and returns you to the screen you were previously on. Use the Recent Drawer to quickly and easily access recent items without having to press the Home button and navigate where you want to go.
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Figure 1.5. The Recent Drawer.
Add to Pages Screen
The Home screen enables you to access your library, app, and Internet bookmarks quickly for placing onto one of the pages; to do so, you need to access the Add to Pages screen (see Figure 1.6). To access this screen, press an area of the Home screen without an image, and tap Add to Pages from the pop-up menu. The Home screen shrinks and several options appear. For example of what you can do on this screen, from the Add to Pages screen, tap Bookmarks. When the list of bookmarks appears, scroll to the one you want, press and hold it, and drag it to the page. The bookmark is added to the page, which lets you quickly launch it. Tap Done when complete.
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Figure 1.6. The Add to Pages screen.
The Wallpapers option here is different, as discussed in Chapter 2, “Customizing and Configuring Your NOOK HDs.”
Using Wi-Fi Hotspots
Your NOOK can connect to Wi-Fi networks other than the one you initially set up. B&N offers free Wi-Fi access in all B&N stores. If you take your NOOK to a B&N store, it can automatically connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot in that store.
For more information on using your NOOK in a B&N store, see Chapter 13, “Shopping and Visiting B&N on Your NOOK HDs.”
To connect your NOOK to a Wi-Fi hotspot other than one in a B&N store, follow these steps:
- From the status bar, tap the Settings gear icon (see Figure 1.7).
Figure 1.7. Access your Wi-Fi settings here.
- In the Wi-Fi section, tap Change. If Wi-Fi is Off, tap Off to turn it On.
- Tap the Wi-Fi hotspot you want to use. Your NOOK displays the SSID for all Wi-Fi hotspots in range.
- If required, enter the password for your Wi-Fi hotspot.
- Tap Connect.
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Your NOOK should now indicate that it is connected; you should see the Wi-Fi signal indicator on the status bar on the bottom right next to the battery indicator.
If your Wi-Fi hotspot isn’t listed after you turn on Wi-Fi or is not in the list of Wireless Networks, follow these steps:
- From the status bar, tap the Settings gear icon.
- Tap All Settings.
- Tap Wireless & Bluetooth.
- Tap Find Other Networks.
- Tap Scan to refresh this list, or tap Add Network.
- Enter the network service set identified (SSID), select the type of security (if the Wi-Fi is secured), and enter the password for your Wi-Fi hotspot if necessary. If you don’t know this information, ask the person who set up the Wi-Fi network.
Your NOOK can connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot that requires you to browse to a web page to authenticate yourself. For example, many hotel Wi-Fi hotspots require you to enter a room number or other information to connect. You can connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot that has this requirement by tapping the Web Launch Button from the Home screen after you join the Wi-Fi network.
Disconnecting and Forgetting a Wi-Fi Hotspot
If you want to stop using a Wi-Fi hotspot, you have two options: disconnect or forget. Disconnect just prevents your NOOK from connecting to that Wi-Fi hotspot. Forgetting the hotspot removes the information about the hotspot from your NOOK. If you later want to reconnect to that hotspot, you must set it up again. To disconnect or forget a Wi-Fi hotspot, follow these steps:
- From the status bar, tap the Settings icon.
- If Wi-Fi is turned off, turn it on.
- Tap the Wi-Fi hotspot. This displays a pop-up window.
- Tap Forget to disconnect from the Wi-Fi hotspot.
For more information on configuring the settings on your NOOK (including turning off the Wi-Fi card), see “Your NOOK’s Settings” in Chapter 2.
Charging and Caring for Your NOOK’s Battery
Your NOOK uses a high-tech battery called a lithium polymer battery. You can charge your NOOK’s battery either by plugging your NOOK into your computer’s USB port or by plugging your NOOK into a wall outlet using the supplied AC adapter. Plugging your NOOK into a wall outlet charges the NOOK quicker.
Unlike older rechargeable batteries, your NOOK’s battery doesn’t suffer from a charge “memory.” However, you should still follow some basic rules to maximize the life of your battery:
- Try to avoid fully discharging your battery. Recharge it when it gets down to approximately 20% or so. Although charging it repeatedly is not necessarily a bad thing, the battery seems to function optimally if you charge it only when it drops down toward that 20% area.
- To maximize battery life, turn off Wi-Fi, and leave it off whenever you don’t need it. Same goes with Bluetooth.
- Avoid high heat. Reading in sunlight is fine, but avoid storing your NOOK near a heat source.
- If storing your NOOK for a long period (a week or more), charge the battery to approximately 50% rather than giving it a full charge. The battery, even off, slowly loses its charge—very slowly, but loses nonetheless. By charging it to 50% only and then powering it off for a long time, it mimics how it was initially packaged and shipped. The 50% will go away slowly, and when you power it on again, it may have a low charge, but it is more like what the “factory” setting would have been.
By following these instructions, your NOOK’s battery should last years. If you do need to replace the battery, contact B&N Customer Service.
When You Are Not Reading
When you finish reading, you should let your NOOK go to sleep instead of turning it off. You can force the NOOK to sleep by pressing and quickly letting go of the Power button.
By leaving your NOOK on with Wi-Fi on, it will occasionally download content from B&N such as subscription content and any books that you purchase from the B&N website. When you’re ready to start reading again, simply press and release the power switch at the top of your NOOK to wake it up. Alternatively, you can press the Home button.
Your NOOK’s Controls
Before you enjoy content on your NOOK, let’s go over the controls on your NOOK (see Figures 1.8 and 1.9). In general, you can interact with your NOOK using the touch controls of tapping, pressing and holding, and swiping. The few physical buttons are minimal but provide some tactile controls. The most frequent button you are likely to use is the Home button.
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Figure 1.8. Your NOOK HD’s controls.
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Figure 1.9. Your NOOK HD+’s controls.
The Power Button
The Power button is the sole button on the top-right side of the NOOK. In addition to powering your NOOK on and off, the Power button can wake your NOOK when it’s sleeping or put it to sleep when you finish reading.
To put your NOOK to sleep or wake it using the Power button, press and release the Power button quickly. To turn off your NOOK, press and hold the Power button for 5 seconds. To turn on your NOOK again, press and release the Power button quickly.
The Home Button
The Home button is identified by the NOOK logo (a lowercase n) and is located in the center of the black bar along at the bottom of the touchscreen display. Like the Power button, the Home button performs more than one function.
You can wake your NOOK by pressing the Home button. If the touchscreen is already illuminated, pressing the Home button twice takes you to your NOOK’s Home screen.
The Volume Buttons
These two buttons on the top of the NOOK that control the volume. If no videos, music, or other sounds are playing, the Volume buttons control the Notification volume (that is, when something new arrives such as subscription content). When video, music, or other sounds are playing, the Volume buttons control the sound of the media.
The Microphone
Use the microphone to record voice narration for NOOK Kids™ books. In the author’s recordings, the microphone had an okay quality. When you speak into it for recording, use a strong voice and hold it close to your mouth if you can.