For Hwang, at least, from early position, your goal is to maximize how multi-way the pot is and to avoid the scenario of being heads up and OOP with significant stacks behind. So, his advice is reasonable if you think those are reasonable goals in an online 6max game. I assume that he thinks they are reasonable, since he wrote a book addressing short handed play with many examples from online poker where he routinely open-limps from EP.
IMO it depends on your stack size, the table dynamics and your appetite for variance.
IIRC Hwang's strat primarily revolves around deep stack (200BB) play. it's unfortunate that most online and live (U.S.) play limits players to max buy-in of 100BB.
