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HTML HTML Introduction Global Structure: Part 2

Taylor Plante
Taylor Plante
22,283 Points
Posted by Taylor Plante
Taylor Plante
22,283 Points

Text Edit

I'm using textedit on my mac. When I saved a basic page with a doctype, head, body, and some content, the webpage pulled up the raw html instead of using the tags I'm implementing per the instruction of "Global Structure: Part 2"

Is there something I need to do in the textedit settings or browser (Chrome) settings to change this? Also, in the videos Nick's version of textedit is distinguishing tags from content with colors, and I believe I saw auto-completion as well (similar to the more robust Workspace). Mine, on the other hand, is just reacting like a word processor.

Thanks, Taylor

5 Answers

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Taylor Plante -

TextEdit is a basic word processor, instead of a traditional text editor (contrary to it's name) so there are a few small things you need to setup to use TextEdit with HTML.

Check out this quick tip on how to configure TextEdit for coding HTML.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

To make your life easier on yourself you want to consider getting a programming text editor

  • A free one for OS X is Text Wrangler.
  • A new and promising choice is brackets it's also free.
  • One popular choice is Sublime Text, it can be evaluated for free (a license costs $70)
Taylor Plante
Taylor Plante
22,283 Points
Taylor Plante
Taylor Plante
22,283 Points

Thank you both! It is a .html file, which still doesn't resolve my original question as to why the raw code is coming up in the browser, but I will try out Sublime Text and see if I have the same problem.

Christopher Hall
Christopher Hall
9,052 Points
Christopher Hall
Christopher Hall
9,052 Points

I also recommend a program like Sublime Text. I believe that the reason why TextEdit was not working properly is that it inserts fancy quotes and apostrophes by default, not the ASCII ones that are required for HTML. So the browser was seeing them as special characters, thus messing up the HTML.

Caroline Hagan
Caroline Hagan
12,612 Points
Caroline Hagan
Caroline Hagan
12,612 Points

Taylor Plante without looking at the video (currently in bed lol) sounds like Nick is using something like Sublime Text for his coding - does that look like what you see on screen?

Jacob Miller
Jacob Miller
12,466 Points
Jacob Miller
Jacob Miller
12,466 Points

What did you save your file as? Did you save it as a .html file? Just fwi, you can download a free version of Sublime Text 2 on their website. It's a great text editor.