Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: How are we doing? (5.1.5)
Author: Christoph Pingel Posted: 1/8/1999; 11:06:51 AM Topic: How are we doing? (5.1.5) Msg #: 1914 (In response to 1882) Prev/Next: 1913 / 1915
You are doing very well, but I need better documentation.The first thing I noticed after upgrading was that Frontier is quitting "correctly" (it doesn't take forever to do so) on my PPC G3, System 8.5.1; the webserver also doesn't take too long to turn on and off. The overall perception is that it has become more stable. I love working with Frontier, it's easy to stay up-to-date with the Update button in the Main menu (where else?), and the software continually produces new ideas in my head as I work with it.
Especially fascinating is the .wsf and responder division, and I seriously think that Userland has come a long way at redefining what "web publishing" and "workflow" means: It's so incredibly elegant to keep the scripts and data in the same namespace and make all of it accessible/manageable via HTTP. I'm beginning to understand why you were urging everybody to embrace XML 15 months ago...
I totally agree that learning systems are an issue! For Version 6, I have an urgent desire: Please provide coherent, exhausting documentation about the XML-RPC stuff and other advanced Frontier features. Responders are spread all over the place (builtins.betty, user.webserver, builtins.webserver), and so is the documentation: an How-to here, one there, some remarks on script meridian, a post by Matt duplicated on Scripting News... These individual articles are great, some really enlightening, but sometimes I'm missing the big picture nonetheless.
I *know* there is a logic, a way of thinking behind most everything in the root. But when you just start to learn a new feature, it's hard to recognize the "patterns" in the first place, although they are there. (This reminds me, if only a little bit, of the situation with DHTML before Goodman's book was published. Some docs at Netscape, some at Microsoft, and complexity is rising bitwise: Platforms x browsers x versions.) Believe me, you do yourself a favor by enabeling more people to go deep inside the root and understand it's inner workings when they need to.
Yes, when they need to. Frontier has become so powerful that an average user has to apply "learning on demand", and that is still hard with the available documentation, althogh I admit that the situation has substantially improved since, say, one year ago.
An elegant web based interface for web management, BTW, is something that our customers ask for all the time, I can't wait to get my hands on Frontier 6.
Thank you for listening.
This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:47:07 PM.
© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.