It's impossible for an educational book to match the content dynamics of a website.

Change occurs so quickly a book can contain content that is out of date the day it is published. Only subsequent printing, months or years down the road, might bring it back up to date.

A well-managed, content-based website can be a living, learning laboratory updated within minutes of relevant new developments.

However, unless you own a properly equipped lightweight laptop and can pick up a WiFi signal just where you need it when you need it, it often remains a lot easier to hold a book in your hands than it is to get your hands on digitized information.

A best-of-both-worlds scenario that limits the worst and brings out the best of both a book and a website is to get one learning tool to complement the other.

That's the crowning achievement of Better Houses, Better Living: What To Look For When Buying, Building Or Remodeling (Home User Press, $24.95), a book that comes with a partner website, Better HousesBetterLiving.com.

The updated book to help buyers buy a better home or do home improvement is heads above the crowd in its scope and detail. The partner website keeps the book's information current and makes for a finely tuned packaged approach to learning that publishers don't use often enough.

Both were created by Salem, Ore.-based retired engineer and author Myron E. Ferguson, who has been around the block a few times, enough to inspect nearly 3,000 homes.

It's a stellar dual effort, 14 years in the making, and an approach to delivering the goods used by far too few information providers, as well as publishers.

The book is an expansive update of Build It Right (Home User Press, $18.95) and the new website takes over from User FriendlyHome.com.

After an explanation of the rudiments of home buying and buying options, the book takes you on a detailed room-by-room, system-by-system, item-by-item home tour laden with photos and illustrations, all to help the reader buy or build the best quality home or do the best home improvement possible.

Ferguson provides the lowdown on lots, electrical systems, plumbing, HVAC systems, fireplaces and stoves, doors, windows, security systems, materials, finishes, floors, ceilings, roofs, kitchen, bathroom, laundry room and garage components, living areas, floor plans and much more.

While the book takes note that too often homes are not built with the quality and function to best suit the needs of homeowners, it doesn't waste time slamming the building industry.

Instead, the book uses all its 337 pages to help buyers sharpen their critical eye in the buying or building process and thereby overcome the shortcomings of the building industry.

More than being akin to having a wizened home inspector along for the tour, the book gets behind the walls, under the roof and into the systems. Nitty-gritty information detail is as minute as kitchen drawer slides, the direction of the front door swing, and treads width in stairway design.

The partner website does a good job replacing appendixes typically found in the back of such books and includes eight supplements with topics that include energy considerations, "green" building, building codes, deed restrictions, home builders, real estate agents and more.

The list of website URLs--140 of them--is presented in groups aligned with chapters in the book.

The cost of the book will be more than returned to you after it teaches you how to get the best home improvement or find a new home that works the way it's supposed to--before you move in.

Real estate writer Broderick Perkins, executive editor of San Jose-based DeadlineNews.Com, writes regularly for this newspaper.