You can take HTML-Kit's extensibility several steps further by
adding custom tags and functions with plug-ins. Plug-ins
are small
programs that add new
features to HTML-Kit without you needing to modify the actual program.
According to Chami Wickremasinghe, the developer of HTML-Kit, "I think
it's becoming increasingly difficult for a single source to provide a
complete solution for Web developers, especially given the XML related
changes coming our way."
You can have plug-ins for inserting frequently-used tags, or
for other markup languages. So, if a new version of the HTML standard
comes out, no problem -- you can build a plug-in so you're not left
behind. Once they're loaded into the editor, the plug-ins are seamless.
They exist as buttons on HTML-Kit's Action Bar. Each button contains a
dropdown list of functions, for example the insertion of a tag pair.
There are literally dozens of plug-ins available for download
from the
HTML-Kit Web site. They range from tools to add tables, frames, and
colors to
your pages, to plug-ins that enable you to work with Cascading
Stylesheets and scripting languages like Javascript. And that really
only scratches the surface. Check the plug-ins page at the
HTML-Kit Web site for more information (the link is at the end of this
article).
Can't find a plug-in that you're looking for? Well, if you're
a programmer, you can create plug-ins using programming languages like
C++,
Visual Basic, and Delphi. Or if you're a technically-challenged
do-it-yourselfer, you
can use the separate Plug-in Generator.
The Plug-in Generator
Building a plug-in is easy, though time consuming.
In the Plug-in Generator, you set the name of the function, and then
type what it will do in a supplied field. You can also add tool tips to
the buttons.
Thanks to the Plug-in Generator, I was quickly able to turn
HTML-Kit into tool that can handle the variants of XML that I
work with, as well as to give me instant access to the Cascading
Stylesheet definitions that use.
Each plug-in you build appears as a tab on the Action Bar.
Click the appropriate tab, then choose the button containing the
function you want to use. It's that easy. What you may find confusing
is that the buttons will all have the same icon. You can select icons
for your buttons in the Plug-in Generator (or specify them in your
code), but this requires you to have a set of icons in Windows .ico
format handy.