AddMenu
A Prepossor for Hand Coded HTML Websites

The preprocessor AddMenu is very helpful in maintaining a website written in hand coded HTML which consists of a single HTML page or multiple interlinked HTML web pages. It can do this by

• inserting the current date or time into the HTML files
• substituting user defined text into the HTML files
• inserting other files containing text such as common header or footer into the HTML files
• inserting another HTML or code file into the HTML files
• inserting a menu into the HTML files (however popup submenus are not supported)

Add menu replaces the special markers #file, #html, #code and #menu by the text, HTML, code file or a menu specified by another file. Some some textual substitutions are supplied but the users can specify additional substitutions using the #subs marker.

When using AddMenu, one does not actually edit the file to be published. Instead, one edits the files processed by AddMenu. For example, suppose one wants to publish a web site using the files PageOne.html, PageTwo.html, and PageThree.html. One would actually edit the PageOneA.html, PageTwoA.html, and PageThreeA.html. Normally these files would all be in the same folder along with any required support files. Then one would use AddMenu to output the desired files that would be published. The ...A.html files are normal HTML files except one would use the special markers to tell AddMenu to make the desired substitutions. These ...A.html files that serve as the input to the preprocessor will be referred to as the source files. The files produced by the preprocessor will be called published files.

As suggested by its name, AddMenu was originally written as an easy easy way to add and update menus to multipage websites. Its capabilities have been greatly expanded even though its name remains unchanged and now longer properly represents it abilities. The preprocessor was extensively used and tested in preparing this document.

AddMenu requires Java 1.4 or above to be installed on the computer. (It was tested with version 12.0.) This paper assumes that the computer has been set up so one can run the Java compiler by simply typing "java" at a prompt in a window. It has been tested under Windows 10 but the author assumes that it could be used under any operation system that allows Java if the usage instructions are adapted as needed. HTML5 is assumed. Javascript is not used.

Top of file

Revised 12/17/2019 21:35.

Questions, suggestions or comments: James Brink