While I can't say enough about the usability and the content of the book, I would be doing the reader a disservice if I wasn't to mention that the prevalence of horizontal lines as dividers across pages seem more than a little off-putting--at a certain point, they almost become distracting. I would recommend that, in a future edition, some of the extraneous horizontal rules be removed for clarity's sake.
Also included in the book are two large sections on Microsoft transitions and filters and on Microsoft HTML+TIME (Timed Interactive Multimedia Extensions), components that I probably would have omitted from the book entirely. With more and more people migrating away from Internet Explorer in favor of the open-source Firefox, Microsoft browser-specific technologies are something to steer clear of--not to mention that wipes and fades and such between web pages are just silly, not to mention hideously unprofessional. But, for reference's sake, it's a nice bonus for those programmers who are interested in, say, reverse-engineering or modifying a pre-existing site mechanism.
The book is absolutely stellar otherwise in terms of content; every obscure tag that I could think of was listed, as the book contains the most relevant and up-to-date standards available at the time of its printing. Any future updates will likely be reflected on the book's website, whose URL is listed in the introduction.
So, with only a few minor quibbles to speak of, I have to give this book an enthusiastic "thumbs up." The Issi Cohens are to be commended for wading through such an immense volume of material, distilling it down to the basics and then cross-referencing it all. This is a must-have volume for any web professional who's looking for an accessible and understandable guide to the Internet's core languages.
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