This book is an interesting exercise. The authors did a superb job in researching their issue and in writing up their research. The text is readable, interesting, and never dull, despite plenty of examples, and even code (which can sometimes make a book a bore). The book is simply a pleasure to read.

Any book has two “parents”: the author (in the present case, two authors), and the publisher. The authors did, as stated, a first-rate job. The publisher seems to have also performed professionally, producing a well-designed text that is nice to read; quality was an obvious concern. The book is also well illustrated.

Okay, where’s the rub? The book is copyrighted 1999. In correspondence with the authors, I found that most of it was written in 1997; two years is about normal for publishing a book, if it is to be a beauty like this one. However, the Web is the fastest moving of our fast moving technology. This book is hopelessly outdated. Imagine a book about the Web that does not yet know about Yahoo, Amazon, or eBay. Imagine one that does not yet know about Extensible Markup Language (XML), resource description framework (RDF), active server pages (ASP), Java, the semantic Web or .NET. Almost all links provided in the book were found to be no longer existent.

The question then remains: “Are the design patterns and issues presented here applicable to the design of open hypermedia systems?” After carefully perusing the book, I should state that they are still very relevant. However, it is not clear that this is sufficient. Personally, I would love to see these authors do an updated edition of the book. I am certain it would be a very important addition to the field, if it could be produced in a timely manner. The quality here certainly justifies it, as does the importance of the field being covered. This edition of the book may be very important to those, such as sociologists and historians, interested in the development of the Web, particularly before the economic aspects of it began to impact its development.

One additional item of importance is a common misperception that needs to be corrected: the authors make a very common error concerning the background and history of hypertext. They state, “The first working hypertext system was NLS/Augment (Englebart and English, 1968).” They also state, “Augment was the first system to offer hypermedia support for cooperative work.” This is very clearly incorrect. The terminology is of course new, as is computerized hypertext, and rightly attributed to Vanavar Bush (Memex), Ted Nelson (Xanadu), and so on. However, the actual techniques of hypertext (interlinked text, separation of structure and content, links, blocks of text, and anchors) have existed for some 2500 years, and first appeared in the Middle East shortly after the time of the Alexandrine Empire. This technique has been used for cognitive and teaching purposes for all that time, and still is. We should not confuse technology (the ability to perform a task) wi th its implementation via computer technology.