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Free Open Book
Flash Hacks. 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools |
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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 Flash Hacks is a spotlight. The modern spotlight descends from an invention at the beginning of the nineteenth century by British army officer Thomas Drummond. Drummond produced "limelight" by burning a cylinder of calcium oxide (lime) in an oxyhydrogen flame. As the lime was oxidized by the flame, it produced a brilliant light that could be directed into a beam by a glass lens. Although its original use was to make survey stations more visible at night, limelight quickly became a part of stage lighting; its first appearances were in the Paris opera houses, and it was used widely throughout Europe and the United States until the 1890s. The etymology of the expression "in the limelight"-being at the center of attention-comes from this beam of light, which was used to direct the audience's attention to an important person or event on stage. As technology improved, limelight became less popular as a means to light theatres because it produced intense heat, started fires, emitted a noxious gas-like odor, and cast a greenish tint. Its brief successor was the carbon arc lamp, which was quickly replaced in the 1920s by the newer and safer incandescent spotlight that used a modern 1000-watt lamp. Of course, that lamp was possible because Thomas Edison continued to make advances in electrical technology that led, in 1911, to the introduction of the "concentrated filament" lamp designed for use in a lens hood. Thus, the modern spotlight was born. Marlowe Shaeffer was the production editor and proofreader for Flash Hacks. Norma Emory was the copyeditor. Reg Aubry and Darren Kelly provided quality control. John Bickelhaupt 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 taken from the Classic PIO Entertainment CD. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's Helvetica Neue and ITC Garamond fonts. Melanie Wang designed the interior layout, based on a series design by David Futato. This book was converted by Andrew Savikas 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 Marlowe Shaeffer. The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Ellie Cutler) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, Ellie Cutler, and Jeff Liggett.
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