Frontier: The Definitive Guide: The Definitive Guide

This is useful for those such as I who use intermediate/advanced features of the Radio Userland software, which is written in UserTalk, the language of Frontier. Radio is a great program: you can use its basic features with only basic computer knowledge, but if you are willing to work at it, the program offers tremendous flexibility and user control. This book gives a lot of basic information about the UserTalk language and how it is incorporated into Frontier, and much of this information is relevant for Radio, such as the identity of operators, basic syntax and many of the 'verbs' that carry out basic functions in both Radio and Manila. Unfortunately, it omits some aspects that were added later on, such as the xml and rss verbs, simply because it was published in 1998 and not revised since then.

This book is so useful on a daily basis that I finally purchased a second copy so that I wouldn't have to lug it back and forth between home and work. It takes second place only to my O'Reilly "Java In A Nutshell" as the most beat-up book I own.It covers Frontier only up to version 4, but all of the material is still very relevant; notably, the language syntax is still the same and almost all of the operators and scripts remain as they are described in this book.The layout of the book is extremely clear, it has an excellent operator list/reference in the back, and Matt does a good job of distilling his personal experience in such a way as to help you avoid common pitfalls.It is an indespensable reference if you do Frontier scripting. Excellent!

For anybody interested in the flexible and powerful content-management/web design/scripting environment called "Frontier", this book is a must read.Not only is this book an invaluable resource of "scripting wisdom", Neuburg also qualifies as a teacher in the best sense of the world: No matter where on the "learning curve" you start, he takes you by the hand and enables you to the next steps with this wonderful tool by yourself. A rare achievement in the world of software documentation.