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 featured on the cover of Java Examples in a Nutshell, Second Edition, is an alligator. There are only two species of alligator: the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), found in the southeastern coastal plain of the United States, and the smaller Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), found in the lower valley of the Yangtze River. Both alligators are related to the more widely distributed crocodile.

The alligator is a much-studied animal, and so a great deal is known about its life cycle. Female alligators lay 30 to 80 eggs at a time. The mother allows the sun to incubate the eggs, but stays nearby. After about 60 days the eggs hatch, and the young call out for their mother. The mother then carries or leads them to the water, where they live with her for a year.

Alligators eat a varied diet of insects, fish, shellfish, frogs, water birds, and small mammals. Alligator attacks on humans are rare. Although normally slow-moving animals, alligators can charge quickly for short distances when they or their young are in danger.

Alligators have been hunted extensively for their skin. The American alligator was placed on the endangered species list in 1969, then declared to be out of danger in 1987. The Chinese alligator remains on the endangered list. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the copyeditor and production editor for Java Examples in a Nutshell, Second Edition. Emily Quill, Madeleine Newell, and Jane Ellin provided quality control. Ann Schirmer and Linley Dolby provided production assistance. Ellen Troutman-Zaig wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Alicia Cech and David Futato designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. The print version of this book was created by translating the DocBook SGML markup of its source files into a set of gtroff macros using a filter developed at O'Reilly & Associates by Norman Walsh. Steve Talbott designed and wrote the underlying macro set on the basis of the GNU troff -gs macros; Lenny Muellner adapted them to SGML and implemented the book design. The GNU groff text formatter version 1.11.1 generated PostScript output. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond and Letter Gothic. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano using Macromedia FreeHand 8 and Adobe Photoshop 5. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.

Whenever possible, our books use a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds this binding's limit, perfect binding is used.