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 Java Data Objects is a bilby (Macrotis lagotis), also known as a ninu, dalgyte, pinky, or rabbit-eared bandicoot. Bilbies are rabbit-sized marsupials with silky, blue-gray fur; long, pointed snouts; large, rabbit-like ears; and long, black tails with white tips. This strange combination of traits may appear awkward, but its delicate and cute features have actually made the bilby one of Australia's most attractive and celebrated mammals. For many Australians, the Easter Bilby has even replaced the rabbit as the popular Easter icon.

Bilbies have adapted well to the hot, arid climates they now habitate. Their long, slender tongues help them eat a diet of seeds, insects, bulbs, fruit, and fungi. Bilbies have well-developed forearms and long claws, which they use to dig the deep, spiralling burrows in which they live. Bilbies are strictly nocturnal, and during the day they plug the entrances to their holes with soil to protect them from extreme temperatures. Because bilbies are solitary animals, burrows usually have a single opening and a single occupant, though females often live with their young. Like other marsupials, females have a backward-opening pouch with eight teats, used to carry and protect their young for about 80 days. Bilbies usually have no more than two young at a time.

Once common throughout Australia, disease, agriculture clearing, spreading of the fox and feral cat, and the control campaign against the destructive rabbit (which was often unfairly grouped with the innocent bilby it resembles) have limited bilbies' habitats to isolated populations in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and southwestern Queensland. Bilbies are now listed as endandered species by many Australian and international conservation groups.

Brian Sawyer was the production editor and copyeditor for Java Data Objects. Colleen Gorman was the proofreader. Genevieve d'Entremont and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. David Jordan and Craig Russell wrote the index, with the assistance of Reg Aubry.

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

David Futato designed the interior layout. Andrew Savikas prepared this book in FrameMaker 5.5.6. The text font is Linotype Birka, and the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed. The code font is a modified version of LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed, designed by Luc(as) de Groot with modifications suggested by David Jordan. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. This colophon was written by Brian Sawyer.

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.