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 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. Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and Nancy Priest and implemented in gtroff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. Figures were created by Robert Romano in Macromedia Freehand 5.0 and Adobe Photoshop. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.