WorldTree Software

About ModPro

20,000 Foot Level

ModPro is short for Modular Programming. This free tool enables you to develop web pages using modular programming principles.

10,000 Foot Level

ModPro provides the ability to create web pages using modular programming principles. Modular programming makes programs easier to read, write, debug, and maintain by dividing them into managable pieces. Using ModPro you can divide your web site into reusable modules that make it easier to maintain and provide a consistent look and feel.

ModPro is much more than another HTML preprocessor that merely allows you to include files and define macros. Modular Programming Markup Language (MPML), the language used by ModPro, is a very simple XML based scripting language, like HTML or XSL. At the most basic level MPML provides support for modules that can be defined and referenced from anywhere. It also provides an inclusion mechanism to insert the contents of one file into another file. This allows you to define module libraries and templates and use them in multiple files.

At a more advanced level MPML provides support for creating custom modules in XSL that are used to implement some custom functionality. A collection of custom modules is called a custom module package, or ModPack. ModPro comes with a built in ModPack that defines some nice page layout modules.

5,000 Foot Level

If you have a web site with more than a couple pages you quickly become aware of how hard it is to manage. You'll notice that almost every web site has the same layout for every page with some parts of it the same on every page, like the banner and navigation for instance. Then there are other sections that define the content, which is different for each page but layed out in a similar fashion on every page. If you want to change just one word in a shared section you have to look in every file to change it. If you want to make an even bigger change it involves a lot of copy-pasting and making sure everything is in the right place. If you could change it in one place and update the entire web site it would be a whole lot easier. That's the goal of ModPro.

You can think of HTML as the assembly language of the internet. It is laid out in a linear fashion from top to bottom with no support for modularization. What's needed is a way to bring HTML up to the next level, modular programming. Using modular programming you don't write the code from top to bottom, you break it up into managable pieces that can be used over and over again. You define how all of your pages are laid out in one place and then only deal with content on individual pages. ModPro introduces Modular Programming Markup Language (MPML) to provide modular programming for web pages.

ModPro is much more than another HTML preprocessor that merely allows you to include files and define macros. It is actually a XML-based programming language that provides a better way to develop and maintain web pages by using the prinicples of modular programming. ModPro files are compiled to standard HTML that can be displayed by any browser.

If it sounds complicated it's not. Everything in ModPro is a reusable module containing HTML, it's that simple. Once you learn to use modules you'll never want to write flat HTML code again.

Here's an outline of the major benefits of using modular programming and ModPro to develop web sites.

• It makes your code easier to write because individual modules can be independently written and tested
• Implementation details are hidden in modules making it easier to read and maintain your code
• Individual modules can be reused
• The layout of all pages can be defined in one place, promoting a more consistent look and feel.
• Easily and infinitely extendable. Custom modules can be written in XSL.

Since HTML is not modular it requires a lot of copy-pasting from other HTML code. Copy-paste is not a good programming practice, whether it's HTML or any other programming language. With modular programming you design well defined, reusable modules that are easy to maintain. Once you build up a good libary of modules building web pages is as simple as combining modules and defining content.

Custom modules can be written in XSL to implement some specific layout or make building your web sites easier. They can be shared as Custom Module Packages, or ModPacks. One such ModPack that comes with ModPro is called ModPages. It defines modules to help layout web pages. All WorldTree Software web pages are written using ModPages.

Reference Manual

To learn more about ModPro read the ModPro Reference Manual online, or download ModPro and read the reference included in the package in the "docs" directory.

Requirements

ModPro will run on any platform that supports Java Standard Edition. You need Java Runtime Envinronment (JRE) version 5 or later to run this app.

Download

To download ModPro click here. To install unzip the file to your hard drive. See the reference manual for more information on installing and using ModPro.

Help

If you need help with ModPro, or come across any bug, or would like suggest improvements, please contact me. Also let me know of any sites you create with ModPro and I'll put up a link to it.