HTML::Clean - Cleans up HTML code for web browsers, not humans ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. INTRODUCTION -- ``The HTML Compiler!'' The majority of the web pages of the internet today are much larger than they need to be. The reason for this is that HTML tends to be stored in a human readable format, with indenting, newlines and comments. However, all of these comments, whitespace etc. are ignored by the browser, and needlessly lengthen download times. Second, many people are using WYSIWYG HTML editors these days. This makes creating content easy. However these editors can cause a number of compatibility problems by tying themselves to a particular browser or operating system. Enter HTML::Clean. The HTML::Clean module encapsulates a number of HTML optimizations and cleanups. The end result is HTML that loads faster, displays properly in more browsers. Think of it as a compiler that translates HTML input into optimized machine readable code. Uses You can use the library in your perl-cgi scripts to optimize data. Or use the included htmlclean script to preprocess HTML files or templates on your server. The results should be pages that load faster, less load on your web server and better cross-platform HTML. To read about the latest features, see the Changes file. To find out about known bugs and to see what's planned for future versions, see the TODO file. 2. AVAILABILITY You can get the latest version of the HTML::Clean module from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) or from the author's homepage: http://www.perl.org/CPAN/modules/by-module/HTML/ http://people.itu.int/~lindner/ 3. PREREQUISITES The HTML module requires the following: Perl 5.004 The HTML::Clean module may work with earlier versions of the above, but the author hasn't tested this. The latest versions can be obtained from CPAN: http://www.perl.org/CPAN/ 4. INSTALLATION To build this module, run the following commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install 5. COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 1999 ITU. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 6. AUTHOR INFORMATION Paul Lindner paul.lindner@itu.int http://people.itu.int/~lindner/