Beginner's Issue Reading HTML on a MAC

[kungfutastic]

my very first paragraph

 

 

 

this is my first attempt at a web page

 

 

 

 

[Andrea]

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.

[kungfutastic]

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.....

[Andrea]

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.

[kungfutastic]

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

[Andrea]

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 :-)

[Andrea]

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

[kungfutastic]

Thank youX

[falkencreative]

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.

[Guest Michael foden]

I am having the same problem and I followed your advice 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 THANX

[falkencreative]

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.

[virtual]

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.