The Whole Internet The Next Generation, Kiersten ConnerSax & Ed Krol, O'Reilly, 542pp, £21
In some ways it is like meeting a good friend for the first time in years, getting chatting and realising how much things have changed. Or perhaps a better analogy would be opening a new, revised edition of the Bible and discovering that not only has the language changed, but so has the story.
Ed Krol's Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog was both an old friend and a Bible to the early 1990s generation of Internet users. Published in 1992, its clear explanations informed and excited the wave of users who led the charge on to the new medium. Many of them, in turn, went on to set up online businesses, training operations - or indeed newspaper computing sections, including this one.
The attraction of the book was not just its explication of the mysteries of Telnet, FTP and gopher operations. Ed Krol's common sense, humour and courtesy enlivened the book and lifted it far above the run of everyday how-to books. In the days before Internet magazines the "catalogue" of sites at the back provided a feast of things to try.
Good though it was, that was then and this is now. A new edition was published in 1995, with most of the examples and instruction based on the then-new Windows 95 operating system and dropping the Unix tools that had been used in the first edition. It introduced the World Wide Web, which was also then new to most people.
The older, pre-Web tools still got a lot of space, however. Those old tools, with names like WAIS, Archie, Jughead and Veronica (each a particular tool for finding a particular kind of information) have long since been swept aside as users concentrate on email and the Web (and occasionally FTP).
The process has now gone quite a step further. The current edition introduces itself: "To those of us who have been using the Internet for a long time, some of what we discuss has become commonplace. Consequently we envisioned a new class of Internet user, in which you might find computer-savvy people who nonetheless find themselves overwhelmed by email, unsure of online banking, dumbstruck in a chat room or dead on the floor in an online game."
What follows is a series of common-sense chapters that no longer treat the Internet as a new wonder of the world. Instead, they cover the main Internet tools: Usenet, email and the Web from the point of view of getting the best out of them.
Dealing with nuisance mail, filtering and setting priorities, coping with vacations and keeping up with mail while travelling. These are all covered in the email chapter, plus the details of handling mail on the Palm Pilot.
Similar combinations of top tips and "power-user" advice cover the other online tools. This is no longer the bulk of the book, however. There are also detailed sections on security, privacy and online crime, buying and selling over the Net, banking, investing and playing games over the network.
All of this is good, solid information for the improver rather than the beginner. Few people are likely to take less than two dozen worthwhile tips and techniques from the book to save them time and help them make better use of the Net.
It is not what it was, however. Unless I'm mistaken, much more of the text is Kiersten ConnerSax than Ed Krol. There's a determined breeziness in the prose tone that grates after a while, and in some places the touch is less sure than his. So, useful though it is, to this reader it feels as though the old friend has changed a bit too much. Or that this modern Bible, with all its revisions, is one for a new religion altogether. On the other hand, expectations may have been too high, or perhaps it is the reader, and the Net, that have changed too much.
Ah, the Net in the rare ould times!