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 the JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook is a howler monkey. Howler monkeys are so named because of the very loud sounds they make, which can be heard up to two miles away. They are considered the loudest land-living animals. They have two hollow hyoid bones that allow them to make the powerful sounds they are known for.

Male howler monkeys are black, and females range from a brown to a light tan color. They have a large neck and a large lower jaw (containing the large hyoid bones), short legs, and a long, prehensile tail. All baby howler monkeys are born with brown fur, but the fur on the males eventually changes to black. These monkeys can grow up to 2 feet in length, and can weight up to 16 pounds. The males are usually significantly larger than the females.

Howlers travel and live in packs of one to three males and two to seven females. There is one dominant male in each group. They spend the majority of their time in trees. Their howling vocalizations are used to mark their territories as well as to communicate with other packs of monkeys. Their diet consists mostly of leaves, but they also eat fruit and bugs. They are becoming an endangered species due to the shrinking size of the forests in which they live and find food.

Mary Brady was the production editor and the copyeditor for the JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook. Brian Sawyer and Sarah Sherman provided quality control. John Bickelhaupt 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 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 Joe Wizda 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. This colophon was written by Mary Brady.

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.