Conventions Used in This Book

The following is a list of the typographical conventions used in this book:

Italics

Used to indicate URLs, filenames, filename extensions, and directory/folder names, e.g., a path in the filesystem appears as /Developer/Applications

Constant width

Used to show code examples, the contents of files, console output, as well as the names of variables, commands, and other code excerpts

Constant width bold

Used to highlight portions of code

Gray type

Used to indicate a cross reference within the text

You should pay special attention to notes set apart from the text with the following icons:

This is a tip, suggestion, or general note. It contains useful supplementary information about the topic at hand.

This is a warning or note of caution, often indicating that something might break if you're not careful, possibly quite badly.

The thermometer icons, found next to each hack, indicate the relative complexity of the hack:

Whenever possible, the hacks in this book are not platform-specific, which means you can use them on Linux, Macintosh, and Windows machines. However, some things are possible only on a particular platform.