Dec 26, 2012 - If, like me, you are starting to get into HTML and web design, you may feel. TextEdit is a basic text editor that ships with your Mac as part of the. Naturally, many Mac users sooner or later look for an alternative, and they often stumble upon You might think that Notepad++ Mac isn’t available because it’s also not possible to download Notepad It has a live preview feature that allows you to instantly see changes to CSS and HTML files in your web.
In Windows, I was able to pull up Notepad, input some raw HTML code, and save the file with the.htm (or.html) extension. And I had an HTML file that would open in my browser. I CANNOT get this to work in Mac OS X Snow Leopard in TextEdit, even though I've consulted something like 3-4 online tutorials that purport to show you how to do just that. The file ALWAYS opens back up as a text file (albeit with some formatting.thanks a LOT, TextEdit)! Any suggestions? Is there an application I can download that will allow me to do things like this?
I'm desperate. TextEdit differs from Notepad in one significant way - Notepad is plain text, TextEdit is rich text.
When you save a file as rich text, the file is saved with much more content than you put in your document. This content defines how the document looks - you'll notice that in TextEdit, you can change the font, change colours, etc. This is because it is rich text and not plain text which is, well, just plain.
![Mac notepad for mac Mac notepad for mac](https://www.askdavetaylor.com/0-blog-pics/macosx-open-with.png)
You can have TextEdit work in plain text mode if you'd like. Go to Format Make Plain Text. When the file is saved, it will save as plain text, much like Notepad does. TextEdit differs from Notepad in one significant way - Notepad is plain text, TextEdit is rich text. When you save a file as rich text, the file is saved with much more content than you put in your document.
This content defines how the document looks - you'll notice that in TextEdit, you can change the font, change colours, etc. This is because it is rich text and not plain text which is, well, just plain. You can have TextEdit work in plain text mode if you'd like. Go to Format Make Plain Text. When the file is saved, it will save as plain text, much like Notepad does.Thanks for the response. I'll try to work with that. I've just noticed that another problem is that if I try to do plain-text editing of existing HTML files on my Mac, right-clicking and opening them with TextEdit fails to pull up the HTML code - it just shows me a crappy version of the website.
Any way around.that.? In Windows, I was able to pull up Notepad, input some raw HTML code, and save the file with the.htm (or.html) extension.If you are working with HTML, you would do well to get a better text editor, or, even better, a text editor that includes lots of features to make HTML coding go faster.
A better, yet still free text editor: TextWrangler (free) This one is a longtime favorite of hand coders: BBEdit ($100) This is my personal favorite for hand coding HTML: PageSpinner ($30) Other choices: CODA ($99) ESPRESSO ($80) However, you might want to use a WYSIWYG Web site creation program instead, or just occasionally for quick jobs. There are a bunch of these for the Macintosh; all of them are good. But here is my favorite, and it is FREE: KOMPOZER (free and open source) Kompozer is a very impressive application. It is more like DreamWeaver than iWeb, but it is very easy to use. In fact, it is almost as powerful as a professional-level Web site creation tool.
![Notepad in mac Notepad in mac](http://i1-mac.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Java-NotePad_6.jpg)
There are several free tutorials to learn how to use the program, and it isn't hard to learn to use. You can easily migrate your existing Web site(s) to Kompozer because it doesn't use a proprietary format, it will simply open your HTML-based Web site. FREE KompoZer tutorials: - KompoZer User Guide - How to Design and Publish Your Website with KompoZer - KompoZer Tutorial 2: How to Add Images, Change Fonts and Colours Tutorial on designing and publishing your web pages with KompoZer, a free standalone WYSIWYG web editor. Other free KompoZer tutorials Scroll down to KompoZer Tutorials - KompoZer Video Tutorials Randy B. Singer Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions) Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance.