Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of ActionScript Cookbook is a crab-eating opossum (Philander opossum). It can be found throughout Mexico, Central America, and South America. The length of the animal can vary, though it is usually between 250 and 350 millimeters. Its prehensile tail often grows to about the same length.

P. opossum is an omnivore. It eats insects, lizards, eggs, worms, frogs, small mammals, and birds, along with seeds, bananas, and leaves. It reproduces all year round, though the number of offspring varies. During the dry summer months when food is scarce, the litters can be as low as one or two young, while as many as seven young can be born during the more plentiful rainy season.

Most opossum nests are built in the low branches of trees, though they can also be found on the ground or in burrows. P. opossum spends most of its time on the forest floor, where it forages for food, though it will occasionally take to the trees. It was once thought that P. opossum was nocturnal, but it has often been observed scampering and foraging during the day. When it senses danger, P. opossum will hiss or yelp, and it can be a capable fighter.

Matt Hutchinson was the production editor and copyeditor for the ActionScript Cookbook. Reg Aubry, Sarah Sherman, and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Johnna Dinse wrote the index.

Emma Colby designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from Cuvier's Animals. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Andrew Savikas to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Matt Hutchinson.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.