Tim,

After getting used to your superb books, there is some software that I find I really need "an O'Reilly book" for: Netscape Navigator. I use version 4.51, but the need has always been there. I need complete, accurate, and informative information of the type your books are known for. There are too many things in Navigator (and Messenger and Composer) that I have to learn by experimentation or having other people show me.

Do you have such a book planned? I realize that the complexities of Netscape Communicator are much less than the software covered in your typical books, but the book I'd like does not have to be long--just excellent! The few books on Navigator that I have perused seem to have the typical long-winded do-this-in-the-GUI type of instruction.

What really bugs me is the people out there, like those at Netscape, who think nothing of re-inventing a "book" into a collection of dozens if not hundreds of chunks (so-called "web pages"). As much as I use and love and rely on the Web, and hypertext, putting substantial technical reference material out ONLY IN THE FORM OF HYPERTEXT (Web-based or otherwise) is a terrible step backwards in the guise of new technology. It is like publishing a printed book in 20 or 50 or 100 chapters, each bound and shrinkwrapped separately, stocked on bookstore shelves separately and not in any order. If I want a book, this is not what I will use...

I know releases of Netscape Navigator software get done fairly often, but perhaps this is an opportunity to do a book in searchable PDF format that your author updates more often and users could buy off your site.

--
Tim Gill
Hewlett-Packard, Inc.

Tim,

Well, I've actually wanted a Netscape Communicator in a Nutshell for quite some time, but I've never got a proposal in that satisfied me. I agree that there's an awful lot there under the hood, and it would be great to have a book that provided that information.

A chunk of what you want was in the old Internet in a Nutshell, but that book is somewhat out of date, at least with regard to Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Hopefully, we'll have the book you want some time next year.

--Tim

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