7.3 Replacing Messy HTML Constructs

One of the greatest benefits of using FunnelWeb is its ability to replace messy slabs of HTML with a simple macro call. This page provides lots of examples of this.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are messy and you can eliminate their messiness from your FunnelWeb web source by defining a macro for each link you want to use. For example:

@$@<Dilbert@>@Z@M@{@-
<A HREF="http://www.dilbert.com/">Dilbert</A>@}
@$@<Yahoo@>@Z@M@{@-
<A HREF="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo</A>@}

While the definitions themselves are certainly messy, having made them, we are now free to refer to Dilbert and Yahoo within our webs in a very clean manner indeed. For example, the links page of the previous example now becomes just:

@O@<links.html@>@{
@<Begin page@>@(Dave's Links@)

<P>Check out @<Dilbert@> and @<Yahoo@>!

@<End page@>
@}

Images

Suppose we want to include a small image of a checkmark at various points without a web page. Here's the HTML that has to be included at each point:

<IMG SRC="bin/tick_red_12.gif"
WIDTH="12" HEIGHT="12"
HSPACE=4 VSPACE=0
ALT="*" BORDER="0">

Yuk! To eliminate this mess in our FunnelWeb/HTML, we can define a macro for a tick mark as follows:

@$@<Tick@>@M@{
<IMG SRC="bin/tick_red_12.gif"
WIDTH="12" HEIGHT="12"
HSPACE=4 VSPACE=0
ALT="*" BORDER="0">@}

Now, using tick marks without your text is easy. Here's an example:

@<Tick@>Low cost.<BR>
@<Tick@>Easy installation.<BR>
@<Tick@>Available now!<BR>

Large Form Fields

Another example is where you have form fields with lots of options. Here's an example of a commonly occurring form field that goes on for a couple of hundred lines!

<SELECT NAME="Country">
<OPTION>United States
<OPTION>Afghanistan
<OPTION>Albania
...
<OPTION>Zambia
<OPTION>Zimbabwe
</SELECT>

Using FunnelWeb, you can move all this to a single macro definition as follows:

@$@<Country form field@>@M@(
<SELECT NAME="Country">
<OPTION>United States
<OPTION>Afghanistan
<OPTION>Albania
...
<OPTION>Zambia
<OPTION>Zimbabwe
</SELECT>

Now, whenever you want a country field in a form, you can just write:

@<Country form field@>

Navigation Buttons

Sometimes the navigation constructs that appear within pages can become rather messy. Here's an example where we have three buttons at the bottom of each page.

<TABLE WIDTH="100%">
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="left"   VALIGN="bottom"><
 A HREF="links.html"><IMG SRC="bin/left.gif"></A></TD>
<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom"><
 A HREF="home.html"><IMG SRC="bin/up.gif"></A></TD>
<TD ALIGN="right"  VALIGN="bottom"><
 A HREF="hobbies.html"><
 IMG SRC="bin/right.gif"></A></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

We can move all this to a single macro definition that has three parameters, one for each target page.

@$@<Nav@>@(@3@)@Z@M@{
@<P@>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%">
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="left"   VALIGN="bottom"><
 A HREF="@1"><IMG SRC="bin/left.gif"></A></TD>
<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom"><
 A HREF="@2"><IMG SRC="bin/up.gif"></A></TD>
<TD ALIGN="right"  VALIGN="bottom"><
 A HREF="@3"><IMG SRC="bin/right.gif"></A></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
@}

Now, to add navigation buttons to a page, we can just write (near the end of the page).

@<Nav@>@(links.html@,home.html@,hobbies.html@)

If you wanted to, you could build the navigation buttons into the @<End page@> macro and set it up with three parameters instead.