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 Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell is an American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos). It inhabits the coastal regions, freshwater marshes, lakes, and rivers of North America, and winters in the Gulf States of the southern United States and Mexico.

Sometimes confused with the whooping crane, the American white pelican is a huge white bird with black primary and outer secondary feathers, sporting a wingspan of over 9 feet and an average weight of 16 pounds. Unlike the brown pelican, which plunge-dives into water fromthe air, the white pelican feeds while swimming, ingesting fish and straining out frogs, salamanders, and aquatic invertebrates from its pouch.

White pelicans prefer to nest on low, bare islands, sandbars, or remote peninsulas, especially on freshwater lakes. Egg laying begins in mid-May in the colonies, and both parents incubate a brood of two chalky-white eggs, which hatch about a month later. The parents incubate the eggs with their feet because they don't have a brood patch of bare skin on the belly. The chicks are helpless when they hatch and eat by scooping digested food out of the adult's pouch. As the chicks mature, they join a pod and feed in large groups until they are ready to fly, at approximately 10 weeks.

American white pelicans are one of the most social of the avian species: the flocks forage cooperatively, by encircling fish or driving them into shallows where they are more easily caught. Colonies of a hundred or more birds are often seen nesting, roosting, foraging, and sunbathing together.

In medieval heraldry, the pelican is a symbol representing maternal protectiveness and piety. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor, and Norma Emory was the copyeditor for Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo and Matt Hutchinson proofread the book. Mary Brady and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. James Quill and Mary Agner provided production assistance. Tom Dinse and Johnna Van Hoose Dinse wrote the index.

Emma Colby 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 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. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Reg Aubry.