Please help. I want to work out how to manually HTML edit using Windows ME.
What I want to do is work in a text file, and continually reload the file in IE, to check my progress. In Mac this is easy to do, you just save the text file as .html so IE can “see” it.
The problem is that in Windows it seems that as soon as I save my text file as an .htm/.html file, it changes to an Internet Explorer file. I want to keep it as a text file, that I can reopen up and reedit as often as I like.
I don’t want to have to go through some stupid rigmarole of endlessly Viewing Source and cut and pasting it back into a text file.
Nor do I want to use Word and its bloated auto-HTML, or any other WYSIWYG editor and its resultant bloated code.
Little more details on that for you. The file extension on PC’s define what sort of file you are working with. In the control panal there’s a Folder Options control that lets you make associations between file type(extension) and program. If you scroll down the list(typing first letter will jump to that part of the list) you’ll find that Internet Explorer is the program defined to run when you open that file. You can define other action to perform on the file in this control. For example, there is probably an edit action defined. If you click on the Advanced button, A small window will appear, show the various action that may be performed on that file.
Ok, to the question. If instead of double-clicking on the file, you right-click and choose edit from the popup menu, that will edit the file. You can used the above control to change what program is used. You can create other entries, like “Edit in Coffee Cup HTML Editor,” or “Open in Opera.” I have this because I sometimes write DHTML and need to test on various browsers.
What is happening is that Windows associates HTML files with Internet Explorer so that when you double-click on the file it automatically opens it in IE.
You probably want this behavior, so you need to approch it from the other end.
Instead of double-clicking on the file to open it in your editor, simply launch your editor. Then, select “File->Open…”. There should be a button or pulldown menu in the Open dialog somewhere to specifiy file types. Change it from “Text (.txt)” to “All Types”. (Or something like that. I’m not sure how your editor looks.) You should then see your webpage.html file and be able to open it.
If you don’t have a way to select the file type, simply type “webpage.html” into the filename box and it should be able to open it.
I do this all the time so let me tell you what I do.
I use the notepad. You can drag the icon of an html file over the notepad and it will open in the notepad. Double click the file to open it in the browser of your choice. Edit the file in notepad and save it when you want to view it in your browser. Minimize, do not close, the notpad. Click reload on your browser to view your changed html. Minimize the browser and go back to the notepad for more editing. Repeat as necessary. (I have a multiple monitor set-up, so I actually have my raw html on one monitor and the browser open on the other.)
I also frequently use tanstaafl 's file type technique.
I use ME and edit html all the time. The best way to do this is when you have the page open in IE, just go to View/Source and edit yor code there. Then hit Refresh on your browser to see the changes. You may already know this, but you should also be checking the page in Netscape and Opera it is amazing how different it will look even after you validate your code.
Thank you all very much for your help and answers! It has been very useful info. Mac handles files very differently, I am getting used to the difference though.
I will cross-platform test. On Mac I usually test with icab - but its implementation of HTML standards is so severe the pages usually render totally differently on IE and Netscape (which don’t actually respect the agreed standards fully, unlike icab).
Will have to download a copy of Netscape and Opera at work now…