Colophon

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 Programming Visual Basic 2005 is a crested grebe. Grebes are sleek freshwater birds that inhabit lakes, rivers, and estuaries on every continent on Earth, except Antarctica. The crested variety (Podiceps cristatus) is 46 to 51 centimeters long and has a wingspan of 59 to 73 centimeters. In the summer months, adults can be recognized by their colorful head and neck plumage. As winter approaches, these decorations turn white. Grebes are powerful swimmers and can pursue fish underwater. They also dine on aquatic insects, tiny vertebrates, crustaceans, and snails.

Grebes are monogamous during the mating season. Both males and females can initiate courtship. A grebe attracts a prospective mate with extravagant water dances (they will often mirror each other's behavior, sometimes in displays of synchronized swimming or by running next to each other along the surface of the water) and over a dozen distinct vocalizations that include wails, chirps, peeps, and whistles. Both sexes aid in the construction of the nest, and both incubate the eggs. Once the chicks are born, the mother and father share in the feeding duties and carry the chicks from place to place on their backs.

The grebe's primary predators are ferrets, gulls, falcons, hawks, bass, pike, and humans. These days, grebes are hunted for food. However, in 19th-century Great Britain, the species was hunted almost to extinction for their colorful "fur," which was used to adorn hats.

Matt Hutchinson was the production editor for Programming Visual Basic 2005. Octal Publishing, Inc. provided production services. Darren Kelly, Genevieve d'Entremont, and Claire Cloutier provided quality control.

Karen Montgomery 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. Karen Montgomery produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Keith Fahlgren 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, Jessamyn Read, and Lesley Borash using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Matt Hutchinson.