The table of contents looks like that of a college textbook. The material is presented in the topic frame and consists mostly of dense text. There are some animations, but they are rather simple and do not really add anything to the information. While they are synchronized with the voice-over, the movement of the mouse cursor is jumpy and the videos take longer than a few seconds to load. Microsoft's approach is closer to a textbook than MindQ's method.
Most chapters also contain one or more labs, which contain one or more exercises.
Unlike MindQ's products, this one does not track a user's progress, nor does it score the tests. This product has some nice touches. Also, the interface is instantly familiar to anyone who has used a browser or Windows help. Microsoft's Mastering Internet Development Mastering Internet Development covers a great cross-section of the topic, with the surprise being that Java is actually mentioned. Ten chapters cover the background of the Internet, protocols, installing a web server, using ActiveX objects, writing server-side scripts, and writing Visual Basic Script applets, as shown in Figure 6 .