General ideas

Ok, the most important thing to understand is that we need a so called makefile (which has nothing in common which GNU make!). Here, we get the most widly used settings:
Please note that blank lines and files starting with # are ignored!

# denfine the menu
menuitem part01.html _part01.html 01 * * Part 1 
menuitem part02.html _part02.html 02 * * Part 2 
...
menuitem part08.html _part08.html 08 * * Part 8

This will define the menu. Every file which has to appear in the menu, has it's menuitem here. The entries after it are (in this order):
file to write sets the name of the file makeHTML will generate. Don't use any filenames with paths here, but only single filenames. If you want to send your created files to a directory, see below.
content filename: This file contains the content of the file which will later be generated by makeHTML.
gfx base filename will be used to parse the name of the graphics file, which is the menu item to this file, see also set gfxfilename
gfx highlight filename will be used for the graphic which is the highlighted version of this menu entry
gfx shown filename will be used for the graphic which is displayed in the menu, when this file is called
You can see an exapmle of such a menu (which is created by the shown code) at the top of all of these pages.

Menu settings

# set the direction of the menu (horizontal/vertical)
set menu horizontal 

# set the size of graphics border
set border 0

These two settings define the appearence of the menu: The first sets weather you will get vertical or horizontal menues (default is horizontal) and the second defines the border (default is 0) of the menu items.

None menu files

# files which don't appear in the menu
file nonemenu.html _nonemenu.html

This will create files, which don't appear in the menu themselfves, but which have the menu and the same layout. It is especially useful, if you have CGIs which display a HTML page which should have the same layout like all the others, but doesn't contain and dynamic information. ("Thank you filling out our formular...") In this case you can redirect the return page to this one.
An example for none-menu-file, is this file.

Setting the output path

# set the path where the result files should we written
set htmlpath ../html/

This will set the path where the result files are copied to. Please note that makeHTML interprets all graphics filenames relative to this path!

Correcting the gfx counter

# set starting value for $count_gfx (=number of pictures before menu -1)
set start_count_gfx 0 

# set add value for $count_gfx (=number of pictures in the dummy file after
# the menu -1)
set add_count_gfx 0

If you want to use graphic highlightning on mouseover (a little javascript), this is is must. It defines how many graphics appear before and after the menue in the dummy file (see below).
Note that you have tu substract 1 for bove values, i.e. -1 for no graphics before and after it.
As the menu needs highlightning at the moment, you must set these values. In comming versions, first you will be able to use menus without hightlightning and these commands will become obsolete, as makeHTML will detect them itself.

HTML settings

# set the title of the page
set title Exapmle pages for makeHTML 

# the html version
set html 4.0

These commands define to different html settings:
The first is the title, which is the same for all files at the moment.
The second sets the html version, so that a W3C conform header can be created.

The dummy file

# set the dummy file
set dummy _dummy.html

You need a dummy file which defines the general layout of your pages. Set it here.

Graphic files

# set the default graphics extension
set gfxfilename pics/nav_part*.jpg

# set the default string which is added for highligted menu items
set gfxhlfilename pics/nav_part*_hl.jpg

# set the default string which is added for highligted menu items
set gfxhl2filename pics/nav_part*_shown.jpg

Here you can set three basefilenames for the graphic files. Please not that they are all relative to the htmlpath which was set above.
For all of them the asterix is replaced by the additional filename which is given for the menuitems in the menu definition.
The gfxfilename sets the filename for the menu entries as they are used normally.
gfxhlfilename is the name of the file which will be displayed when you move your mouse over the menu item and it is not active at the moment.
gfhl2filename is the file which is displayed, when this menu item is the active page.
To make this a little bit more clear, look at the menu at the top of this page: page2 is active, all the others not. If you move your mouse over one of the other items (and you've activated javascript) they will show a mouseover-effect.

Menu seperator

# set the gfx dummy file (space between two menu items)
set gfxdummy pics/nav_sep.jpg

# set the width of the dummy (0 for autosize)
set dummywidth 32 

# set the height of the dummy (0 for autosize)
set dummyheight 32

If you want a seperator between two of your menuitems, please set it here. Note that the basefilenames are not applied to this graphic filename.
If you don't trust makeHTML's autosize function to detect the size of this file you can give the size. This is especially useful for JEPGs and PNGs which are not yet autosized.

Size of the menuitems

# set the height and width for the menu items
set width 96
set height 32

If all of your menuitems have the same size, you can set this here. This will speed up makeHTML a little. If it is not set, autosize tries to detect the size for every menuitem.
Please not that autosize is not availible for JPEG and PNG yet.

Meta tags

# ----- insert the meta tags
meta author Jan Theofel, jan@theofel.de / www.theofel.de 
meta description This are some exapmle pages for the homepage creation tool makeHTML. Visit http://www.theofel.de/oss/makehtml.html for more informations.
meta keywords exapmle, makeHTML
meta revisit-after 7days
meta DC.Title Exapmle pages for makeHTML 
meta DC.Creator =author
meta DC.Subject This are some exapmle pages for the homepage creation tool makeHTML.
meta DC.Description =description
meta DC.Publisher =author
meta DC.Contributor none 
meta DC.Language en 
meta DC.Rights written by Jan Theofel, jan@theofel.de - This is public domain, you may use and change it your your needs!

An important point to optimize your page for search engines are the meta tags. You can set them here, and they'll be written in all the files in this order.
The syntax is that the first argument is the type of the meta tag and all the rest will be the content.
If you want to support DC (Dublin Core) you normally will type a lot of your meta tags twice. Here you can simply add =other_equal_tag and the content of an other meta tag will be inserted.

Previous page
Next page