I have been a net user since I was in college, back in the 1980's, when I used to frequent mailing lists, newsgroups, and occasionally IRC. I published my first personal page in the early days (Mozilla - back in the 1990's). I wrote an instruction page back then, entitled "Net Legends", which was active until an ISP change, back in 1997.

I've been pondering re-doing it on occasion, especially those occasions when my mother has felt threatened by a virus hoax. I realized that it was time to begin when a flyer about internet safety came home with my daughter, which began with the instruction:

"Get your child to teach you how to log on."

My qualifications for writing a net-manual are basically these: I know more about the net than either my parents or my children. My husband is a network engineer, and frequently serves as technical support for his parents and mine, and he has agreed to help me get it right in essence, even when I oversimplify.