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 tool on the cover of Car PC Hacks is a wire cutter. Following the inventionof wire came that of the wire cutter, a tool similar to pliers, with sharpedged cutting jaws like scissors. Pliers were invented in Europe around 2000 BC to grip hot objects, principally iron. Over the centuries, many different kinds of pliers have been developed specifically for new inventions, including horseshoes, fasteners, pipes, and electrical and electronic components. Wire cutters, like other kinds of pliers, are comprised of two handles, a pivot, and a head section with gripping jaws or cutting edges. Conventional wire cutters utilize a compression-type cut in which the blade edges collide, pushing the wire out of the way. The long handles relative to theshort nose of the cutters amplify the force in the hand's grip on the wire. The tool on the cover also has stripping abilities and may alternately be referred to as a wire stripper. It has an additional center notch that makes it easier to cut insulation from a wire without cutting the wire itself.

Genevieve d'Entremont was the production editor and proofreader for Car PC Hacks. Rachel Wheeler was the copyeditor. Mary Brady and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Lydia Onofrei provided production assistance. Ellen Troutman-Zaig wrote the index.

Hanna Dyer designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a photograph from the Stockbyte Work Tools CD. Karen Montgomery produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's Helvetica Neue and ITC Garamond fonts.

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 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, Jessamyn Read, and Lesley Borash using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. This colophon was written by Lydia Onofrei.