DaveNet 1998 Review: Frontier
We've decided to push the Frontier 5.0 shipdate back to Friday, January 30. 1/28/98.
In some ways we're just getting started. 1/30/98.
I believe websites are LANs, not operating systems. If you can use a database on Linux that connects to our database on Windows or Mac, that's almost as good as having our software on Linux. We're looking for projects we can collaborate on to build and document these kinds of compatibilities. 2/6/98.
I often say to him "You should have seen how this worked in Frontier 4!" We both have a good laugh. It's about making software. There's always room for improvement. 2/10/98.
The object database can be both enticing and frightening. I want to get it even further out of people's way. Make it something you can open to get a glimpse at all the power, but have it neatly out of your way for all your daily work. 2/10/98.
A learning center home page that grows in a manageable way, that allows the most people to contribute, and has the greatest possible degree of clarity and accuracy and completeness. A "best practices" enclyclopedia that makes it easy to get the answers quickly. 2/10/98.
Are we a community, and if so, what does the community do? Do we have developers, and if so, what is their committment to their users? What level of professionalism do we aspire to? What is UserLand's responsibility? Our developers want independence, so do we. 2/22/98.
I've got an idea of nirvana in learning systems, now we just have to flesh it out and start implementing. 2/22/98.
I'm really waiting for nirvana to catch up with me. An outline with wrapping text is what I want. Like other former-MORE users, the outliner in Word doesn't do it for me. In the meantime, I like the casual feel of typing into Eudora. I feel relaxed. 3/1/98.
We delivered a new server-side architecture for Frontier 5 called Betty. It was developed by a brilliant University of Texas undergrad named Wesley Felter. Wes works for UserLand between classes and mid-term exams. In the middle of last week he shared something that he had been developing on the side, something he called TinkerToy. 3/10/98.
I read half of the book on two plane flights on Wednesday. For me it was a stirring experience. The words describe something I had written ten years ago, documenting design decisions that are still running. For me these ideas were buried in the past, but Matt brought them into the present for me. What a gift! I learned a lot about my own work. I think every software designer and developer deserves this experience. 3/14/98.
I'm a systems guy. I love scalable content, but I live for plumbing. 3/17/98.
Now I hope that people on our mail lists understand why we turned them off. We're going to change now. We don't want to waste June debating with people. We have decisions to make, and have a right to make them unilaterally and without getting consensus, just as the people who use our products do. The mail lists made it difficult for us to move and that's why we stopped hosting them. 6/1/98.
Now we're about ready to release the commercial version of Frontier. You'll see a different attitude. A new Dave and a new UserLand. But all the old ideas were right too. We're ready to do a new kind of software company. You'll see. 6/18/98.
We think Frontier 5.1, the new release, with new performance, reliability and compatibility; new HTTP client and server capabilities; market-leading XML support; and breakthrough net-based RPC technology; is the development environment that Telescript wanted to be and that Java will someday be. 6/23/98.
Hey vive la difference! I'm thankful that Frontier is not like Dreamweaver. That means we don't have to do what they do, and we don't have to do it all. 6/29/98.
In fact, we are working with other companies on formats for remote procedure calls in XML. I've been very public about that. So far, none of the companies we're working with have said publicly that their format is compatible with ours. 7/13/98.
A procedure call is the name of a procedure, its parameters, and the result it returns. 7/14/98.
This morning, Sports Illustrated opened a ground-breaking photography website for the Goodwill Games. The application is running on three NT 4.0 machines, connected with XML-RPC over a LAN. 7/19/98.
XML-RPC is rolling. We've learned that steady consistent evangelizing works better than trying to make it happen fast. This is a technology we're serious about investing in because it plays so well to the strengths of our product and the skills of our community. It's a longterm deal. It's taking a while for the lightbulbs to go on, but it is happening. 7/23/98.
We're doing a communication system. We've adapted to TCP, HTTP, HTML and XML. We have useful interfaces for planning, organizing and programming. My personal circle is widening, and I'm learning more about how I communicate, with others and myself. All this shall meet. Communication at a human level connected with communication at a technological level. Sounds like a mission statement to me. 8/14/98.
An important security hole in all versions of Frontier has been detected and closed. 8/19/98.
The importance of 5.1.3 is that at this point people can start seriously deploying XML storage applications running in Frontier. 8/20/98.
Today I'm thinking about an alien living in some other galaxy, browsing the web, seeing a link to Earth, clicking on it, and finding something interesting. What would that website look like? Who would be writing on that website, and what tools would they be using? 11/20/98.
Quietly we've been testing a new runtime environment for our websites at UserLand. In early October we started the new Discussion Group, which is merely an HTML interface for the broader content management system that has been at the core of Frontier since mid-1996. 12/1/98.
