For the last two days I've been looking at some of Frontier's (and Radio's) newest features. Things that I didn't have time for until now, like WindowTypes and NodeTypes.

Putting a bit of polish on a small tool for a client, I wanted to create a pretty "nodeTyped" outline. (I'll say more on that in a separate entry.)

I spun my wheels for a couple hours figuring out how to implement nodeTypes in Frontier. First, there's very very little documentation. Second, I couldn't find some of the scripts that I knew had to be there somewhere.

For example, double click on a collapsed line in an outline, and the opExpand callbacks runs Frontier.tools.nodeTypes.expand. Bing! Yep, that works nicely. Double click on the line again to collapse it, the opCollapse callbacks should run, including Frontier.tools.nodeTypes.collapse.

Bong. Unfortunately, there's no such script.

In frustration, I talked to Brent to find out if my installation was hosed somehow, or if they'd forgotten to include scripts in Frontier that have been part of Radio for almost a year. I thought it had to be something about my setup, since I can be a little hard on the software at times.

Nope. Turns out that there are a number of scripts and 'trinkets' that never crossed over from Radio to Frontier.

This can make it difficult to write scripts in one place that will automatically work in both.

I've promised Brent that I'll document any more missing objects I come across.

Back at the very end of November Macrobyte picked up a new client. The initial project was very, very small (like, $200).

However, he liked the work so well that he sent me a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate as a "bonus", with which I bought Corinne a cookbook and hard cover novel. Also bought myself the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

Today I (mostly) finished up a second project for him. This one was a little bigger, and he sent me another bonus! This time he bough me a license to the MacOSX version of Radio. He knows I don't have OS X yet, so he bought that for me, too!

Very cool. Macrobyte turns ten years old this month, and in all that time I've never had a bonus from a customer. (Art Christianson did offer me one of his bizarre paper weights once, I think. Does that count? Oh, and I found my wife at RR Donnelley... maybe that should count too.)

Wait, there's more! Here's a note he sent before telling me about the first bonus:

Perfect. Abolutely perfect. Exactly what I had in mind.

I can't wait for other people to use it, too.

Please consider me a (very enthusiastic) references for future work if needed.

Thanks Clark. I've always been a sucker for a kind word (big time), and there's nothing better than praise from a customer who's already paid you.

:-)