250 HTML and Web Design Secrets is an excellent resource, with timely and practical training and advice for readers with a variety of skill levels (beyond novice). It is very tech-oriented, which is both good and bad. This is good for people who are looking for that level of advice, and who are already at least moderately experienced in the very technical end of webpage development. For such readers, this book is very accessible, as it flows logically from concept to concept, from more basic concepts to much more difficult material. For novices or beginners, however, it may be challenging. This could nevertheless be an invaluable tool for beginners as they develop their skills and the material becomes more accessible.

Although this book may be too "tech-oriented" for researchers or agency-level website developers themselves, such people may want this resource for their "tech people" who will actually do the web design on the front lines. Even a novice, with the help of available web-programming software, can publish pages on the internet in a short period of time - but the level of sophistication needed to take full advantage of this resource is a bit higher than that. This book, then, is good news for advanced website designers, experts, researchers, evaluators, and educators.

This "secrets" book is reminiscent of an "HTML for Dummies" kind of book, and could in fact be used in the same manner as such books. But this reference is not nearly as "dumbed down" as the "Dummies" series (probably to the delight of experienced web designers), and beginners could quickly get in "over their heads". For example, some assumptions are made by the author that the reader will understand certain buzz-words, conventions or slang that are part of every-day vocabulary among programmers (e.g., UNIX and LINEX). It is therefore helpful if the reader is already at least somewhat well-versed in the area of computer programming and/or web-design (or their histories) to fully appreciate some of the information. The downside of this is that, without a grasp of some basic concepts, platforms, applications, etc., the reader can quickly get lost and the rest of the discussion becomes much more challenging.

The upside is that the information is valuable to the kind of person who would know how to immediately apply the concepts. Like the "Dummies" series, this book (as noted by the author) was meant to be read from beginning to end, but it can also be used as a quick reference. There is a great deal of information, but it is clearly and logically organized for such a purpose. As that type of a reference tool, the impressive amount of material is a plus.

As of today, the information in this resource is current and applicable. The book's author is well-seasoned and experienced with this material and with such reference books. Given the nature of the internet, however, and conventions for web design that are "fluid" and evolving, like HTML, XTML, Cascading Style Sheets, etc. _ there is a real danger that this book will be substantially obsolete within a year or two. There should therefore be plans for frequent re-issues, updates, etc. The author is more than sufficiently aware of this, and does a great job of pointing the reader to resources, especially online, in order to stay abreast of current developments.

Although there is an intimidating amount of information, and some of it may be inaccessible to novice web designers, the bottom line is that this is an excellent resource with very practical, clever tips that can greatly assist in sophisticated website design, and it is written in as lively a manner as possible for such technical material.

Scott McIntosh, Ph.D.
is an Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. As Co-Chair of Web-Assisted Tobacco Intervention (WATI), funded by Health Canada and the National Cancer Institute, Dr. McIntosh is highly interested in improving health outcomes by maximizing the therapeutic reach of internet-based communication strategies. The internet, which is fast becoming an intervention tool for many types of health care providers, is in its infancy in terms of an established evidence-base for what works, when it works, and for whom it works. Dr. McIntosh emphasizes that website design improvements and innovations and evaluation of health outcomes will be the key driving forces of such work.