htmlPX: The HTML Programmer's Extension

Introduction

The HTML Programmer's Extension, htmlPX, is a simple command-line program that can be used to build websites from template files. The template files and other, auxilliary files, are combined by htmlPX to produce HTML files that can be uploaded to a website.

htmlPX is designed to allow someone who is well-versed with HTML to quickly build template files and code library files with a simple text editor. A wide variety of HTML editors can also be used to create these files. These files are then combined based on a site file, which is a set of directives to htmlPX, to create an entire website. This process is referred to as compiling or generating. The advantages of using htmlPX over straight, hand-coded HTML files are:

Easier to use than many other "database-driven" approaches
Allows use of your choice of HTML tools
Provides a means of building multi-pages sites with a great deal of consistency
Allows rapid changes to the "look" of the site upon recompilation
Provides a means of reusing HTML code by a means other than cut-and-pasting
Provides an easy means of creating "mirror" sites with very slight modifications
Produces HTML code that can work with all browsers, unlike code that uses style sheets

I started building htmlPX because I needed a tool to build my own websites and I couldn't find a free tool that was as powerful and as easy to learn and use as I needed. I hope you take a few moments to learn how to use htmlPX. I believe it will be well worth the investment in time you give. The 30 minutes it takes you to learn to use this tool will be paid back many times over in productivity improvements. I hope htmlPX makes you more productive and makes building your websites easier and more fun.

Register

You can register as a user of htmlPX. Large numbers of registration will encourage continued development of htmlPX. You will be notified of updates to htmlPX. Your name and address will not be shared with third parties.

How htmlPX Came to Be

htmlPX, the HTML Programmer's Extension, is a family of products that are designed to help the HTML developer produce consistent websites easily with a plain text editor and a good knowledge of the Hypertext Markup Language.

I developed htmlPX as an exercise to learn Java and as a tool to produce my own website. It does not take long when you are building your own website to realize that you need more than just a simple HTML editor to produce nice looking and consistent websites. A single page is easy, and several pages linked together are not too bad until you decide that you want to make a change in the standard formatting of your pages. Maybe every page needs a copyright notice at the bottom. Suddenly, you find yourself having to work your way through each HTML file trying to make sure they are all getting the necessary changes. It becomes a real nightmare.

I hit that point after about 5-6 hours of developing my first real website. I started to realize that there were more common features for each page than I had at first suspected. I also decided that I wanted to be able to make global changes in the look of each page. I wanted to add a background bitmap to each page. I began to wish for a tool, and as a programmer, I had a pretty good idea of the kind of tool I wanted. Something that would work with the tools I was already beginning to use.

I had already run across a tool on the internet that I thought could help me. It is Frontier. I got a copy of it (it's free, until version 5.1), and installed it at home. Six hours later, I couldn't get a single web page out of Frontier. I learned a lot about it; it is a database driven website generator. It appears to be very powerful and a great tool. If you are serious about learning to build lots of web sites, I would recommend taking a look. But it is too much work for me. I don't want to learn another language and database just to build my websites. There had to be something better.

There is! The better solution is htmlPX, the HTML Programmer's Extension. Welcome to it!

Documentation

The following documentation files will guide you through using htmlPX.

User's Guide		A quick tutorial and a basic user's guide
Reference Guide		A detailed reference to all htmlPX directives

Support and Questions

You can contact us directly by emailing me at kwilson@wiserve.com. Since this is free software, I cannot promise to fix the problem, but I will certainly try. I want you to be successful and tell all of your friends.