Asia Society Frontier proved flexible enough to handle all the wrinkles in this project: javascripts, various files types (applets, audio, Flash)

Philip Suh describes the project:

PROBLEM: The Asia Society wanted to convert their website from a framed site to a non-frames site. The site contained over one thousand HTML files, more than 2300 graphic and media files. Each framed page contained 2 framesets, with 2 frames per frameset; thus, one 'page' was about 5 different files. Complicating things were javascripts and image maps that had to be extracted and then reinserted into the proper files. Audio and Java applets had to be handled properly, and the site structure had to be preserved. Page titles also needed to be auto-generated. On top of this, existing links shouldn't break.

I was sub-contracted to convert the site with Frontier. A custom importer sucked all the data in the database, inflating a clean root to 20 megabytes. Then I wrote a script to crawl the site, deleting frame pages that were not needed, and cleaning 'content' files-- preserving the main body text, javascripts, meta data, even HTML comments-- and creating the necessary directives for each page.

One template worked for the entire site. A custom directive allowed us to control the header graphic for each section of the site. Modifications to the renderer allowed me to publish binary objects as well as html files, and worked around files of different types with the same name (i.e., 'china.html', 'china.swf', and 'china.au'). Custom javascript handling allowed more than one javascript object per page--using the javascript directives that were automatically created during the 'cleaning' process.

PROBLEM SOLVED: Frontier proved flexible enough to handle all the wrinkles in this project: javascripts, various files types (applets, audio, Flash). It saved the designers countless hours cutting and pasting by hand; and enabled the project to finish on time, and under budget. In the end, Frontier converted the site from frames and reduced the html file count down to about 350--an almost entirely automated process. Although approval for the new template took several weeks, I was able to convert the site in less than three days. When I finally got the template, I loaded it in, started the rendering process, and went home to bed. The next morning, I came in, FTP'd the site back to the client, and was done. Frontier made it that easy.