Frontier 5: Fat Pages

A fat web page is an HTML document that contains embedded information intended to be installed in a database running on a local machine. The embedded data can be program logic, text, outlines, user interface elements, or arbitrary binary information.

How to make a Fat Page

Using this page as an example, the extra directives needed are:

#isFatPage "true"

Tells Frontier to render this page as a Fat Page.

#adrPageData "workspace.howdy"

Tells Frontier what object to embed in the page. This can be any type of Frontier object.

When Frontier renders the page all the necessary Fat Page information will be added.

How to load a Fat Page

1. In your browser's menu bar, choose Save As from the File menu.

2. Switch into Frontier. Choose the Open command from the File menu.

3. Open the file you just saved in the browser.

4. A dialog will open asking for the "Name for imported object?"

5. With the example in this page the name is "workspace.howdy" -- click OK and the object "howdy" will be installed in the "workspace" table.

Where is the Fat Page data?

Do a view source on this page. Scroll to the bottom. The Fat Page data is enclosed in comment tags at the end of the page. This page includes a one-line Hello World-type Frontier object. This allows the user to read the documentation while the embedded information is being downloaded.

Recommended size of embedded information?

This will depend on the bandwidth contraints of the expected audience. Under 100K or the equivalent of a web page graphic is recommended for most situations.

More information

See UserLand's Fat Pages site for more information about fat pages and a whole bunch of sample fat pages.

http://www.scripting.com/fatPages/