Philanderer's Intro to Frontier

We've used the Frontier scripting language for years, on two platforms, but mostly for simple tasks like listkeeping. You don't have to know scripting for that. If you keep extensive lists of passwords, birthdays, cheat sheet notes and the like in folders of text files, you'll like Frontier's collapsible outlines. Mac people, who remember and used Attain's now-defunct InControl product, will appreciate the Frontier outlines.

Frontier is a database, compiled scripting language, web publishing engine and much more. It's been around for years. Recently, Frontier added powerful web support, a Windows version, and a $299 per year price tag for version 6.0. Ouch. Fortunately, freeware version 5.01 is still supported and available, along with vast stores of well-organized html documentation and tutorials.

OK, OK. Maybe you're not going to take up scripting. I was looking for a replacement for AppleScript [which doesn't run very well under Windows :-)]. On a beginner's end, there are macro languages with nice front ends. Mac and PC users not already familiar with QuickKeys, by CE Software, should look into it. It's surprisingly powerful and compellingly indispensable, while normally residing as an unobtrusive "faceless" application in the background.

On the high end, there's the full-blown programming languages, like C, C++ and VBasic. I am going to count VBasicScripting and JavaScript as subsets of the full programming languages because of their complexity, even though they do operate on run-time or precompiled scripts.

In between, there's AppleScript and the ancient, criminally neglected HyperCard, forever Mac-only products. And then there's Frontier, always "there", perennially ignored, and yet, by far, the most robust and complete suite of desktop and scripting tools ever to exist on the Mac or PC platform.

While doing the Frontier tutorial, we discovered a script called BuildSite which will blow your socks off -- if you have any interest in large-scale HTML site building. It's quite an adventure just to watch the script blur by in action. We intend to use this script to load large collections of text files, such as humor and recipes, into a consistent HTML format. We've put our BuildSite writeup in the COMPUTERS section. We hope you'll check it out!

by Alex Forbes, copyright ©March 8, 1999

2002 update: The Frontier application has grown in scope and complexity. It seems to have lost its roots as a general-purpose scripting language in favor of the currently lucrative web hosting solutions market. The 2002 price is $899 (version 9.0). We dropped out of the upgrade path years ago, but still use version 6.0 almost daily for listkeeping and automated scripting chores. It still runs fine under Windows 2000 and XP.