Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
How Frontier is Different
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 12/6/1998; 7:05:42 AM Topic: Zope vs. Frontier Msg #: 863 (In response to 832) Prev/Next: 862 / 864
Here's the difference between Frontier and ASPs, Allaire and Zope. We have editorial tools. The other object databases don't have a browser/editor that compares with ours. And they don't have integrated text editors and outliners.Also, as development environments, many of them don't have script editors, or you have to pay more for them. That's what ActiveState and Scriptics are about. I think we're way ahead of them in this area. Ten years of development, not just of a scripting language and a faceless database, we have a complete set of editorial tools that can be used by writers and programmers and system managers.
We are so far ahead in editorial tools, when compared to the other environments, and we know it, and we're deepening our investment in this area. The key thing is integration. We can do things the others can't because we have a presence on the machines with the highest installed bases as content workstations. Mac and Windows. And our server side is strong enough to run a moderate-flow web presence, so you know it can handle the load on your internal network, your "Intranet".
Other things they don't have. Hooks into all the Mac content apps and the relationships and experience at crafting scripting interfaces. It's a political and technological thing. Again, we've been working on this for ten years. We are in the same circle as Adobe, Quark, Bare Bones, Microsoft, Macromedia. Eventually all that connecting will pay off. We're the only environment that plugs in in this way in the publishing world. We're the place where assets created by the popular tools can be mixed and flowed into an easy to manage, easy to browse, searchable web presence.
Over time that's how I think it will shake out. We are not, at this time, trying to be a dynamic serving environment in competition with ASP, Allaire, and the Linux solutions. We are not trying to be a broad discussion back-end like WebX. For a moderate flow site, you could do your home page as a dynamic Frontier application. You could run a community discussion group with this software too. But that's not our target.
We want to run great on the Intranet *behind* the web presence, supporting the group of people collaborating to create and manage a web presence that's served on the most popular and competitive serving platforms.
See how it fits together? I think in a couple of years we'll be standing alone and working with everyone else, with a very clear position and a happy customer base.
Dave
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