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Rating: 
Summary: An exercise in pseudo-academic self-indulgence
Review: This book was a complete disappointment. I bought it to learn about hypermedia systems. What I read was an exercise in pseudo-academic self indulgence. The authors clearly know their stuff, but equally clearly, they were more interested in showing off their knowledge than in communicating it. The book is full of references to earlier hypertext/hypermedia systems, but they all assume that the reader is as familiar with them as the authors. The net result is that only someone who is already an expert in this field can make any sense out of anything they are saying. The book includes a number of "design patterns," but they are of little value. None of them includes a "motivation" section to put the problem into perspective. Nor do they include many of the other sections (applicability, structure, collaborations, etc) that made the "Design Patterns" book so valuable. Similarly,the object-oriented framework for hypermedia they discuss is presented at only the most abstract level, with little discussion of parctical implementation and use issues. If you are already an expert in this field and you want an academic discussion of the state of the art, this book might be OK. Otherwise, forget it. Amazon is getting my copy back. The publisher needs feedback too.
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