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The animal on the cover of ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition, is a siren, a particular type of salamander found in North American freshwater habitats. Salamanders are amphibians with tails; they diverged from other amphibian species (including frogs) early in amphibian evolution. All salamanders have smooth skin that is kept moist by secretions from numerous glands. When their environment becomes too dry, too hot, or too cold, the cold-blooded salamanders burrow into mud, and their body functions slow down. Sirens develop cocoons to shelter themselves until conditions improve.
Sirens are considered very primitive salamanders, as they are aquatic (live permanently in water), lack hind legs, have reduced front legs, gills, and other larval features into maturity, and their offspring are fertilized externally in the water. They are active at night, coming out and swimming much like eels do, using their dorsal fin in side-to-side motion to propel them forward. As they do so, they feed by gulping at insects and larvae. They expel plant matter through their gills.
Like all amphibians, sirens are an important part of a balanced ecosystem. They are small predators who in turn are preyed upon by fish and birds. Their glandular skin and fragile systems put sirens in the unfortunate position of being early pollution indicators in their freshwater habitats. Siren intermedia, an unusual siren subspecies that inhabits a large North American range and is known for its ability to produce vocal clicks and shrills, has nearly disappeared from Michigan, perhaps due to the presence of Rotenone, a chemical tool used to manage fisheries.
Brian Sawyer was the production editor and copyeditor for ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition. Linley Dolby, Jeff Holcomb, and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Genevieve D'Entremont, Judy Hoer, and Andrew Savikas provided production support. Julie Hawks wrote the index.
Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is 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.
David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted to FrameMaker 5.5.6 by Joe Wizda 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 Sarah Jane Shangraw and 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.