Widget Construction Tutorial
Introduction
This section provides an example of how to
build a
phpHtmlLib
widget
that can be used by other folks that use
phpHtmlLib
To see some of widgets that come with
phpHtmlLib
Go here
What is a Widget?
A widget is just a functional block
of html that can be reused in many
places on a single page or application.
I have built a few widgets that I use to
do some common things for some of my
websites/applications that I build.
Most of them are navigational widgets
such as the
TextCSSNav
and the
NavTable
widgets. These both provied a
navigational element that is easy to
use/reuse.
Why Use Widgets?
The most obvious answer is
write once, use many.
They boil down to
the same reasons why I use objects
to do html/pages/applications in the first
place.
- Easy to use
- Ease of maintenance in the long run
- Fix a bug? All pages that use it get the fix
- Consistency amung pages/applications
- Code Reuse
- Code Reuse
- Code Reuse
Downside?
Since Widgets are by design supposed to
be reusable in many places of a page, and
on many pages on a site/application,
making sure the html it outputs is rock
solid amung your supported browsers can
be a pain. But that is true for any html
code you write. So they do take some time
to get right, and provide an easy to use API.
But once you are done, its just awesome to
reuse, reuse, reuse.
