• Registered: 2009-11-05
  • Posts: 5

Topic: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

I am doing the web site one tutorial, the very first video in fact and my html text document wont work. It just looks like the text document in the browser page.
I am using a mac and textedit as my writing tool. My browser that i am using is 'Firefox', i have tried sea monkey and safari and none of them seem any different.
Im sure i have done something wrong but it maybe that i am using the wrong browser, here is my doc as instructed to do,
<html>


<head>
<title>
This is my first web page
</title>
</head>



<body>
<h5>my very first paragraph
</h5>


<p>
this is my first attempt at a web page
</p>



</body>


</html>

Many thanks for helping,
kind regards
d

  • Gender: Female
  • From: San Antonio, TX
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 3,640

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

How did you save this?  You say your TEXT document does not work - html is not a text doc, it's html - make sure it's saved as whatever.html.

  • Registered: 2009-11-05
  • Posts: 5

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

THanks for that. I write the doc in text edit (on mac) and also tried word. I then saved as a html doc (looks different with the web browser logo) Im using firefox.....:(

  • Gender: Female
  • From: San Antonio, TX
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 3,640

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

Sorry, but I don't know anything about macs - there are others here who work on them.  Hopefully, someone will come along shortly and help you out with this.

  • Registered: 2009-11-05
  • Posts: 5

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

OK. I am thinking though that it shouldn't make any difference whether mac or pc really. Its really frustrating i just want to get started...ahhhhhhhhhhh

  • Gender: Female
  • From: San Antonio, TX
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 3,640

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

It shouldn't make a difference, but there could be a mac-specific issue I have no idea of.  SOMETHING clearly isn't working right :-)

  • Gender: Female
  • From: San Antonio, TX
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 3,640

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

I just changed your thread title - hopefully this will get you help faster.

  • Registered: 2009-11-05
  • Posts: 5

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

Thank youX

  • Gender: Male
  • From: Chico/Sacramento, CA
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 2,343

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

TextEdit defaults to a "rich text" mode, which may be giving you problems.

To fix it:
-- open up TextEdit
-- go the the Preferences
-- Make sure you are using the "plain text" option

I believe that should take care of your issue. You may need to copy/paste your old files into new, plain text files to get it to work. And make sure you are saving your files as .html, of course.

  • Registered: 2009-11-05
  • Posts: 1

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

I am having the same problem sad  and I followed your advice smile  now it's not letting me save as an html  ???  Is there any way around this ??  Plez help been pullin my hair out for an houre now  sad  THANX  smile

  • Gender: Male
  • From: Chico/Sacramento, CA
  • Registered: 2008-12-19
  • Posts: 2,343

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

Michael foden wrote:

now it's not letting me save as an html  ???

Can you be more specific? Are you getting an error message? From the "Save as" dialog, just type in your file name, and remove the ".txt" and replace it with ".html" If you get a popup asking if you are sure you want to change the file extension, make sure you select "use .html".

Also, if you were previously using the rich text format, you can't simply open those files up within TextEdit and save them and expect everything to be fine. You'll need to open up a new, plain text file, copy and paste your code from the old file to the new (this removes all the rich text formatting) and then save the new file as .html.

...I may as well mention, there are a lot of better free alternatives for writing HTML code on the Mac... TextWrangler and Smultron are both good alternatives that will give you code highlighting and other useful functions. My personal favorite is Coda, though that is a paid app.

  • Gender: Female
  • From: Tenerife, Spain
  • Registered: 2008-12-29
  • Posts: 358

Re: Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

You might need to also check the following boxes in the "Open and Save" - as Ben told you
-- open up TextEdit
-- go the the Preferences
-- go to Open and Save

Check ignore rich text commands in HTML files
Check ignore rich text commands in RTF files

Uncheck add ".txt" extension to plain text files

Then you can fill in your HTML options from the drop down menus

Remember these changes only apply to new files, as Ben explained, previous files saved in Rich text format will need to be copied and pasted into a new file and then saved.