Chapter 7 Chapter 7This chapter describes Frontier's menus and how to navigate in and use the various types of windows
Frontier has 3 permanent menus: File and Edit are always the leftmost menus, Window is the rightmost menu. (Of course, the standard Macintosh "Apple" menu is on the far left, and one or more system and utility menus may be on the far right of your screen.) All other menus are defined in the Object Database and can be customized, added to, or removed. As shipped by UserLand, the default Object Database includes 4 more static menus: UserLand, Net, Custom and Suites. It also supports a single dynamic menu that depends on the type of window that is frontmost in Frontier: Outline, Script, Menubar, Table or WP. Various suites may add one or more additional menus.In this section, then, we will document each of these menus as they are shipped from UserLand Software -- with the exception of the Net menu which is documented on the Frontier website. If your menus differ somewhat, it's because someone has already been about the business of customizing them.
Because most menu items in Frontier are implemented with scripts, you can view and customize their behavior. We will describe the menubar editor window later in the chapter. In case you want to look at the scripts as you are reading about the menu items, just hold the Option key and select the item of interest. In the menubar editor window, click the "Script" button. That's it!
Before we start our description of each menu in Frontier, we should be clear about some of the terms we'll be using in this chapter.The menubar is the entire top line of the display of your main (or only) Macintosh monitor. It is the place where all of the menus show up.
A menu is an individual label entry on the menubar. When we speak of the File menu, we mean the word File on the menubar and all of the items on that menu when it is opened by clicking on its label with the mouse.
A menu item is an individual entry in a menu. We will speak of the Save menu item on the File menu, for example. When we discuss selecting a menu-based action, we will often use words like choose and select with respect to menu items, which we will also sometimes refer to as choices or options. We use the term item to mean menu item as well.
The Apple menu is a standard part of the MacOS. The only item on this entry that is unique to Frontier is the "About UserLand Frontier..." option that appears first in the menu. When you select this item, you'll be shown the same information window that appears when you launch Frontier. This message will disappear when you click the mouse anywhere in the Frontier environment or press (almost) any key on the keyboard.Contents Page | Next Section -- File Menu