Serious First Steps In UserTalk Scripting
Prev | Table Of Contents | Next


01. About This Tutorial

Possibly you've gone through the earlier tutorial introducing Frontier's powers of Web site management. If not, then if you're a complete Frontier beginner you should do so before starting this tutorial, because you'll emerge familiar and comfortable with the Frontier environment. This tutorial doesn't presuppose any of Frontier's Web site management features, but it does assume that you understand what Frontier is, and that you know your way around Frontier tables, wptexts, and outlines. The earlier tutorial is good for that. Also, the earlier tutorial is full of "teasers" intended as incentives for you to start writing your own scripts with UserTalk! It helps greatly, in learning a thing, to have some further goal as a reason for learning it.

This tutorial introduces the programming component of Frontier. It will get you writing scripts in Frontier's language, UserTalk, so that you can put Frontier's power to work for you, solving problems you want to solve, doing jobs you want done.

The tutorial is a hands-on exercise. First we'll write and refine some simple scripts, for practice. Then, we'll write a userful, powerful Frontier script from the ground up: we'll start by stating what we want to accomplish on the computer, we'll plan how to do it, and we'll put the plan into action with Frontier. When we're done we'll have a bells-and-whistles Frontier script that you can use to impress folks with your programming prowess, and that also does something darned useful if you happen to be a Web site manager. At that point, you'll know enough about UserTalk, and enough about how to find out more, to be able to go on independently to develop programs of your own.

An old saying, sometimes wrongly attributed to Thoreau, runs: "Give a man a fish and he eats for day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." In this tutorial we'll do both. UserTalk programming is our fish; we'll catch fish together, and then you'll know enough to be able to do all the fishing you want on your own.

The Frontier "learning curve" is much vaunted, but take a few steps along it and you've trampled it flat. Writing Frontier scripts is fun, easy, and satisfying. Most important, it's very useful; the power is there, waiting for your needs and your imagination to grow to take advantage of it. Let's go!


Prev | Table Of Contents | Next
Text © Matt Neuburg 1997 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
You can download a copy of this tutorial.
This Web document scripted with Frontier. Last build at 4/18/97; 10:46:07 PM.