About This Book

Thank you for purchasing this Take Control book. We hope you find it both useful and enjoyable to read. We welcome your comments at tc-comments@tidbits.com. Keep reading in this section to learn more about the author, the Take Control series, and the publisher.

P3.1. About the Author

When Sharon Zardetto wrote her first computer book, her sons were not even in preschool; now they're both out of college. She used to write Mac books as Sharon Zardetto Aker, and she meant to drop the "Aker" part of her name when they got out of high school, but she was too busy—this and Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon were the first two books under her new, though original, name.

Sharon has a long Macintosh history, starting with a 1984 Mac (128K of memory, 400K floppy disks), and articles in the earliest issues of Macworld and the premiere issue (and every one thereafter, for many years) of MacUser. Her nearly a thousand magazine articles over the years include a regular MacUser column on portable computing. Her 20 or so books include many editions of The Macintosh Bible, as well as The Mac Almanac—whose especial claim to fame is having been part of an answer on the Jeopardy board—on TV, not the play-at-home version. (The correct question was: "What is a computer?" Really!)

After an almost 5-year hiatus from writing, during which she designed and programmed databases, and created online educational material for pharmaceutical firms, she decided to dive back in with Take Control ebooks. You can send her email about this title at sharon@takecontrolbooks.com; she can't promise a response to every email, but does promise to read every one.

On the personal side of things, Sharon notes that she met her husband in an Apple Computer store. (Double-sided floppies had also just been introduced.)

P3.2. Thank You

First, to everyone who helped on the original edition of this book, because their generously donated time and effort lives on in this one. That's when I blamed—I mean, thanked—Tonya and Adam Engst, who convinced me to write a book about fonts when what I wanted to do at the time was write about FileMaker. Thanks with no blame at all went to my first-round readers: Marilyn Rose, Jerry Szubin, and Rich Wolfson; all the Control Freaks for their time and efforts, with extra to Joe Kissell and especially to Tom Gewecke for his above-and- beyond correspondence; Lea Galanter for her professional nitpickiness.

For the first version of this Leopard edition, there was a somewhat secret society of writers and reviewers, since only those who were NDA'd (under non-disclosure agreement with Apple) for Leopard could look at the material. So, special thanks to the Control Freaks and Irregulars subset who took time to read through the manuscript.

P3.3. Shameless Plugs

Sharon has more Macintosh information than she knows what to do with, and much of it doesn't fit our Take Control line. Check out the beginnings of her own lines of ebooks, 33 Things and Minifestos, at http://www.33thingsbooks.com. In addition, as she finished this book and its companion volume, Sharon started putting together a site and blog for Mac tips and techniques (along with some commentary on issues). Check them out at http://www.mactipster.com and http://mactipster.wordpress.com, where you can not only collect information, but contribute it, too.

But she and her friend Andy Baird did hammer out something that was not quite the usual Take Control material into a Take Control book: Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon.

P3.4. About the Publisher

Publishers Adam and Tonya Engst have been creating Macintosh-related content since they started the online newsletter TidBITS, in 1990. In TidBITS, you can find the latest Macintosh news, plus read reviews, opinions, and more (http://www.tidbits.com).

Adam and Tonya are known in the Mac world as writers, editors, and speakers. They are also parents to Tristan, who thinks ebooks about clipper ships and castles would be cool.

P3.5. Production Credits

Take Control logo: Jeff Tolbert

Cover design: Jon Hersh

Editor in Chief and template master: Tonya Engst

Publisher and Grep automation master: Adam Engst

Production powered by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris. A tip of the hat to a particular Irregular who helped make this a better book, and a big thank you to Julie, who made swans.