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 Access Hacks is a flour sifter. Ever since humans first produced flour, they have constructed sifters to refine it. The Vikings used round, cup-shaped sieves utilizing horsehair fiber. In preindustrial times, whole wheat was ground in a mill, then sifted through successively finer bolting cloths to get various grades of flour, from dark whole-wheat to almost white for the wealthy. The bran removed while bolting was used by the miller to feed his livestock or was sold to others as feed.

Something similar to this process is still used in modern mills. Wheat first gets broken and separated by plain sifters and purifierstwo advanced sifting mechanisms. During this process the course outer bran skins are sifted from the inner white portions, called endosperm or semolina. Gradually the semolina is milled down into smooth, powdery flour. The clean bran, wheat feed, and flour are each collected in separate channels by a large number of different machines. No hand even touches the wheat until it leaves the mill.

Today flour is generally presifted, but sifting with a hand rotary crank or electric sifter is recommended before baking to remove lumps and further aerate flour, making it livelier for kneading.

Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor and proofreader, and Audrey Doyle was the copyeditor for Access Hacks. Darren Kelly provided quality control. Johnna 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 by PhotoSpin Power Photos. 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 and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. This colophon was written by Lydia Onofrei.