ASP.NET MVC 3 Custom HTML Helpers- Best Practices/Uses

Question

New to MVC and have been running through the tutorials on the asp.net website.

They include an example of a custom html helper to truncate long text displayed in a

Answer 1

public static HtmlString OwnControlName(this HtmlHelper helper, Expression> expression, string label_Name = "", string label_Title = "", Attr attr = null)
        {
            TemplateBuilder tb = null;
            string template = null;
          if (expression == null) throw new ArgumentException("expression");
 obj = helper.ViewData.Model;
                tb.Build(obj, expression.Body as MemberExpression, typeof(T), new SimpleTemplate(new TextArea()), label_Name, label_Title, attr);
                template = tb.Get();
 return new MvcHtmlString(template);
}