Creative Digital – ViewFrame (Newton)

ViewFrame was a 1995 software package for the Newton platform, a "Debugging and Exploration Tool for Newton Devices" written by Jason Harper and published by Creative Digital, Inc. of San Francisco, California.¹² It was a set of Newton-resident programs for exploring and debugging Newton software, letting a developer browse a Newton's complete object space — forward and backward — and examine and modify almost all objects in that space in multiple formats.²

The package positioned ViewFrame as an on-device alternative to the Newton Inspector, presenting more of a program's object space more clearly and without tying up the serial port the Inspector required.² Alongside the core browser it included a ViewFrame Editor for entering, running, and debugging complete Newton programs and sending their results back to ViewFrame for further examination, and a Programmer's Keyboard offering shortcuts for entering NewtonScript phrases and keywords.² Both could be reached from other programs through a documented slot-level interface, and developers could define their own custom object viewers and modifications through a second slot-level interface.²

The front of the package carried a testimonial from Bill Sudd of Cypress Research Corporation, who credited "Jason Harper's ViewFrame" with having saved "days of development."¹ Creative Digital, Inc. operated out of San Francisco; under Steve Mann the firm — as Creative Digital Publishing Inc. — also organized the annual Handheld Systems Conference, formerly the PDA Developers conference, which was entering its third year by 1997.³

AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes