At the same time at least some of the content is quite technical and will go straight over the head of a real novice.
I think if you're a design student, a recent graduate, or someone attempting to get to grips with new media you'll probably benefit from this book.
For the chapter I wrote... I think it's really geared towards people with a pretty good understanding of typography already, and definitely slanted towards those building large scale sites on tight/continuing deadlines for a wide variety of systems and browsers.
And, for sure it'll be out of date pretty quick... but you can learn from our mistakes :-)
For the greater part of today's design world whom are specialized, they will find a number of articles that offer tremendous insight and fresh ideas that they can incorporate. Leaving a number of chapters that can be appreciated, but are of no real relevance to today's digital designer
A few of the authors prognosticate superficially about their chosen subjects, but for the most part this is a book about current trends. Given the life span of most things on the web, this book will probably be obsolete by this time next year.
For people just getting out of school or entering the "online industry" for the first time this could be a fairly enlightening tome. For those already in the field, I would say it's a fun read, but only mildly interesting.
