Saving from Textedit as .html

Oijl · Nov 30, 2008

Well,

On Windows I can write html code in Notepad and save it as .html, open it with a browser and I see the page as the html dictates I should.

On this Mac I've gotten recently I've tried writing html in Textedit and saving it as an html file, and opening it with a browser - and I see only what I wrote, meaning the code itself. For example, in a file I had <body bgcolor="yellow"> and instead of the background being yellow I saw "<body bgcolor="yellow">" on the page when I opened the browser.

How could I be able to simply write simple html code in a word processing program like Textedit and, when I open it locally, have the browser actually recognize the code and execute it?

Thanks,
Oijl

wheelguy · Nov 30, 2008

When you save the file use "save as" and choose html from the dropdown.

Oijl · Dec 1, 2008

That's what I did, I mean. And when I open that html file, it opens with a browser, but I just see the code itself.

CrimsonRequiem · Dec 1, 2008

Under preferences what are your settings?

Oijl · Dec 1, 2008

Ah. Is that what it is?

My settings for Textedit are, for html saving, no css, html 4.0.1 strict, UTF-8 encoding.

Should they be something else?

CrimsonRequiem · Dec 1, 2008

Well I just experimented with the text edit and it seems to do some pretty weird stuff.

First off your preferences are fine.

What I found was that when I did File->Save As... and then changed it to html and I open the file, I see the code.

However when I leave the file format at rich text or whatever and just add .html to the end of the file name it works.

Oijl · Dec 2, 2008

Mmm, thanks! That works, it does what it should, but there's also this long string of text that shouldn't be there.

Specifically, to test if this would work I made a file that contains:

<html>
<body bgcolor="orange">
</body>
</html>

and when I save it as .rtf and then change the file to .html, and open it with a browser, the background is orange, but I can see the text:

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf949\cocoasubrtf350 {\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;} {\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;} \margl1440\margr1440\vieww9000\viewh8400\viewkind0 \pard\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\ql\qnatural\pardirnatural \f0\fs24 \cf0 \ \ \ }

as well.

How should I solve this problem, do you think?

Qua Sar · Dec 2, 2008

Honestly I have had this problem before and to fix it i just got the program SMULTRON. It is a text editor taht also allows HTML, Scripting etc.

Tuppis - Smultron by Peter Borg

I like it so far, and it allows for a variety of coing helps like numbered lines etc.

dchen510 · Dec 2, 2008

You should be able to save by just doing (filename).html

Or another alternative is textWrangler.