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 items on the cover of Online Investing Hacks are darts. A dart is a small missile with a pointed shaft at one end and feathers at the other, and is used to play the popular game of the same name.

The game of darts is thought to have originated in England during the Middle Ages. Between periods of battle, soldiers would ward off boredom by hurling arrows at the upturned covers of wine barrels, aiming for the cork bung. As this pastime grew in popularity, the soldiers replaced the wine barrel cover with a tree's cross-section, because the natural growth-rings provided a built-in means to determine whose dart landed closest to the center.

During the winter months, soldiers spent most of their time inside, and because they couldn't throw full-sized arrows, shortened versions of the arrows were used-precursors to the modern dart. Sarah Sherman was the production editor and the copyeditor for Online Investing Hacks. Emily Quill was the proofreader. Phil Dangler and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Johnna VanHoose Dinse wrote the index.

Hanna Dyer designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is an original photograph from Entertainment and Leisure Stockbyte CD. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with Quark XPress 4.1 using Adobe's Helvetica Neue and ITC Garamond fonts.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted Julie Hawks 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 Helvetica Neue 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 Sarah Sherman.