An introduction to HAML | HTML Abstraction Markup Language

What is HAML?

Haml logoHaml (HTML Abstraction Markup Language) is a lightweight markup language used to describe the XHTML of any web document without the use of the traditional line of code. It is designed to address many shortcomings in traditional template engines, as well as making marks as elegant as can be. Haml functions as a substitute of the page templates online systems such as PHP, RHTML, and ASP. However, Haml avoids the need for explicitly coding XHTML into the template, because she herself is a description of the XHTML, with some code to generate dynamic content.

Haml is a markup language used to describe a clean and just the HTML of every web document, without the use of inline code. Haml functions as a substitute of the page templates online systems such as PHP, ASP, and ERB, the templating language used in most Ruby on Rails. However, Haml avoids the need to explicitly code HTML in the template, because she herself is a description of HTML code with some code to generate dynamic content.

History of HAML

Haml was created because Hampton got really annoyed having to keep hand-typing out templates. So many advances have been made in web-development, but the template has remained the same. Time for something new.

Based on those frustrations, Haml was born as an experiment. However, Haml quickly proved itself in several production-level websites created at Unspace Interactive. In fact, the entire company’s development team quickly shrugged off ERB completely and have gone entirely to Haml based development.

Haml quickly proved itself to be a productivity boon. Also, designers love Haml for its similarities to CSS.

Things are better in web development land since Haml arrived.

The Haml Team

Haml was originally created by Hampton Catlin. He and Nathan Weizenbaum designed Haml through version 2.0. Hampton lives in Jacksonville, Florida and is the lead mobile developer for Wikimedia.

Nathan Weizenbaum is now the primary designer of Haml, and has been the main developer since its inception. He lives in Seattle, Washington and will be going to work for Google once he finishes his last year at the University of Washington.

Example of HAML

Sourcecode in HAML

%strong{:class => "code", :id => "message"} Hello, World!

The result in HTML

Hello, World!

Source from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haml

http://haml-lang.com/