shared-mason-components

A set of HTML::Mason Perl components that can be used to build a website. They were originally developed for use on my personal blog, and later adapted for use on the Harvey Mudd College Department of Mathematics website.

Many of these components were originally written to provide similar functionality to macros in Userland Frontier before it became a commercial product.

Most components rely on data files in YAML format.

Most continuing development has taken place as part of maintaining and improving the math department website, and we have added components for handling course links, pulling out course description information, and so on. Further development of the HMC-related components is unlikely, as I have left their employ.

Note that some of these components are being modified to make them behave better in an HTML5 world.

Available Components

• DTD Generates a DTD header. Can produce different headers based on arguments (e.g., HTML4, XHTML, HTML5).

• breadcrumbs Create a "breadcrumb trail" from the site's root to the current page.

• captioned Create an image with a caption.

• cdlink Create links to a course description.

• coursedescription Extract information from a course description (e.g., title, credits, prerequisites, description).

• gr Creates links from a dictionary of links with short names, link text, URL, and alt text (for, e.g., defining acronyms or abbreviations). Glossary entries can be reused anywhere on the site; change the glossary file and the links will update on the next publish. You can also override the defined link text and alt text for each individual usage.

• hmclogo Generates an image link to the site's home page.

• img Similar to gr, img allows you to insert an <img> tag with predefined alternative text. You can override that text as well as change various other parameters (e.g., sizes and CSS classes).

• localstyle Allows you to define a <%method localstyle>...</%method> section in any page that will be used to insert page-specific CSS code. Useful for overriding site settings for a single page or subsection of a site (if defined in an autohandler file).

• navnavnav Builds navigation menus based on the contents of navigation files in the current and enclosing directories.

• rssfeed Takes an RSS URL and turns it into HTML.

• steps Allows you to create a series of pages that can be stepped through consecutively (forwards or backwards).

• stylesheet Creates a <link rel= tag for a given CSS stylesheet name. Handles relative links.

• uparrowp Creates a "return to top" link.

• validhtml Adds a valid HTML link based on the DTD. (Does not check for validity; that's up to you.)

• wmvembed Allows you to create an embed for a Windows Media video from HMC's Windows Media Server. Now (happily) defunct.

License

These components are available for use under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2 or later.