About this Book

by Tracy LaQuey (Addison-Wesley, 1994)

The Internet Companion has been a leading beginner's title since its original publication date in 1992. It has succeeded because it is nontechnical, easy-to-understand, and enlivened by anecdotes, while containing all the solid information one needs to know to begin an Internet journey.

As the Internet audience has increased, so too has the need for this book increased. With the second edition, LaQuey has updated the book to cover many of the new areas about the Internet, such as commercialization, and the increasingly sophisticated mulitmedia browser tools. The expanded Appendix includes many more Internet resources--with URLs (Uniform Resource Locators or Internet addresses for each).

The first general trade book about the Internet as well as the first title released online on the Internet at the OBS in 1992, The Internet Companion has been read by hundreds of thousands of people in one or more of its many incarnations. It has been published as:

First Edition:

• free ASCII text, distributed on the Internet by the OBS, 1992
  
• paper book, published by Addision-Wesley, 1992
  
• paper "Plus" edition, with software to connect the reader to the Internet, 1993
  
• Voyager Expanded Book edition; available on disk, online at OBS, and later bundled with Apple computers and shipped throughout the USA, 1993
  

Second Edition:

• paper book, published by Addision-Wesley, 1994
  
• paper book, bundled with FreeRange Media's Information Superhighway Video, 1994
  
• paper book, "Plus" edition, with software to connect the reader to the Internet, 1994
  
• free "distributive" full-text HTML presentation, linked to resources around the world and available online at OBS, 1994

Special Online Edition:

• free full-text interpretation and adaptation of OBS's HTML version, fully-linked and produced as an educational class project at the University of North Carolina in the Spring of 1995 ("CyberCasting and CyberPublishing," taught by Paul Jones). This use of online files points the way to a new form of reading and publishing on the Net: true interactivity where the students or readers can affect a book's content by finding, choosing, and implementing links for it.

International Editions:

• paper books, 1st edition, translated into many world languages, including Polish
  
• paper book, special "European" edition, customized and adapted for European Internet users, 1995
  

As with all of our distributive publications, we welcome your comments and suggestions, and anticipate seeing this project continue to grow and evolve along with the Internet.

Copyright © 1994 by Tracy LaQuey and Editorial Inc.