March 22, 1999

The Internet is busting out all over, and nowhere as profusely as your friendly neighbourhood computer bookstore. A plethora of titles on each tool or topic from each publisher vie for our attention as we wander through the stacks. Which one will be easy to use? Which one is worth hauling back to the office? At over $400 a linear foot you don't want too many duds even with a triple-bonus frequent-reader program.

To help our readers with this problem, Netsurfer Focus Library is including select technical titles chosen from a unique practitioner's viewpoint. Our reviewer, Sam, is a forty-something programmer who began professional life wrangling FORTRAN-66 code on an IBM mainframe. Faced with obsolescence and unemployment after more than two decades, it is time to get with the new world of Web, DHTML, Java, multimedia, and all that cool stuff. Getting retread is never easy, and you need all the help you can get. This is Sam's journey through the cacophony of technical books en route to becoming a web developer.

Web Publishing

Using HTML 4

More Jumping Javascript

Designing with Javascript

Sam just got started in late February, so the pickings are a tad slim right now, but we expect to be adding to the list quickly. You might also want to check out Sam's update to "Web of Another Silk" for the Netsurfer Focus issue on Online Commerce.