Haml 1.5 Released
Back in September 2006, I posted about a new markup language for Rails templates called Haml. For those who missed it, Haml is a high-level, semantic language that makes it rather hard to make HTML markup errors. It relies heavily on indentation, a la Python, for its structure.
Hampton Catlin has now released a significant new version, Haml 1.5. Along with this comes a great new logo (above) and official Web site. A very easy to follow tutorial is also offered to whet your appetite.
Hampton says that a significant improvement in 1.5 is a feature called "Sass", a new way to define CSS stylesheets in a logical way, along with constants, operations, nesting, and selectors. Full release notes are available.
March 22, 2007 at 12:03 am
Haml is a pain in the ass compared to Markaby. Takes twice as long to learn and is twice as finiky with whitespace. ....PASS!!!
March 22, 2007 at 12:11 am
I would certainly be interested in seeing a really top notch tutorial on Markaby + Rails usage at some point.
March 22, 2007 at 2:36 am
I prefer Markaby but it's good to see a new version of Haml and it is a bit more actively developed. I reckon ERB templates are the weak link in the rails stack and any alternatives are fine by me.
I wish fragment caching worked out of the box with Markaby though...
March 22, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I started using #haml (and sass) in the latest project and I'm using it exclusively now. (when updates need to be done on existing screen they first get converted to #haml the same way .css files get converted to .sass). I'm new to rails so I can't compare it to anything else then rhtml, but I certainly like it more then rhtml.
March 22, 2007 at 12:48 pm
For me, Haml's been a dream. I really wish people could get over the fact that Haml uses a different markup system than standard Ruby. [uh, that's the point of it not being ERb, kittens... Isn't it?] HTML isn't Ruby either and you guys use _that_ in views without whining [too much].
And as far as whitespace goes... Do you kittens not indent your HTML? Having a templating system that keeps track of your levels of indentation is friggin' awesome as far as I can see. To suffer a little of "whitespace active" programming to achieve some GORGEOUS HTML output is well worth the price. God, I can't tell you how annoying [IMHO] it was to add a container div in my layout ERb and then have to update _every_ single piece of ERb that was underneath it with the new indentation.
I for one welcome the alternative methodology that Haml offers. And since it's an _alternative_, that means no one is forcing you whiners [with only two points against Haml] to use it. Aren't freedom and choices great?
March 23, 2007 at 6:46 am
Do we really need anymore markup languages?