How do I use TextEdit with HTML files on Mac OS X?

Dear Dave, i use a mac OSX(10.3) to do my site. Recently, i thought of purchasing a CGI script for my site but i have no idea, can a CGI script work with mac? I'm not a techie so need your help. Thanks mate!

Dave, you're a sanity-saver. I was going spare trying to write website stuff on my newly acquired Mac. It's so much easier on Windows. Will buy you a chai soon (promise), when I've recovered from Mac-trauma.

This is weird indeed. When I open an HTML file, TextEdit looses a couple of my CSS styles. So I decided to untick the box and to display all the HTML code.
The thing is that when you untick this box, you cannot save the html file as webarchive any longer. Annoying...
(trying to make a signature for Mail)

I don't know why this did not work for me, I tried everything with no success.
I have OS X 10.4.11. When I try to open the ".html" file with TextEdit 1.4, I get a blank white screen....very frustrating.
Then I remember that you can double click to open the ".html" file which opens your default browser, (I was using Safari) click View > View Source and then you can see the "html" text... hope this helps :)

IT Works!!!!

NEXT STEP ... copy the ".html" text and paste into new TextEdit file and save over your old file in the same location!
I found out that I could only edit the ".html" text in a new TextEdit file.

Thanks for the help. That solved my problem immediately. Why does Apple not make this the default ?

Perfect! Thanks!

Thank you! This has been a bigger and bigger thorn in my side as my family has slowly migrated more and more of our pcs to macs. I can work from home again!

I agree with a previous commenter, why isn't plain text the default? If we want to see what it looks like in HTML, we can open a browser.

Thanks, very big thanks

YAY! I was getting very frustrated with this problem, and your page was the first thing to come up in Google. It WORKED, and I am thrilled. THANK YOU!

Thank you very much..saved my day..!!

Dave,

I accidentally trashed a memory stick containing vital data and text. The stick was written with SimpleText on Mac OS 9.2.2 I was unable to find any software to recover the files on 9.2.2 but I have recovered them with DataRescue on Mac OS 10.4.11 They only open with TextEdit as in the following examples

‚

This tip is a sanity saver! I'm used to using Notepad and was about to give up on TextEdit. I have one more problem when using TE for HTML. No images show up, even thought my path and spelling of the file name is correct. Neither a page background image or an inline image will show. Any ideas?

Thanks

Thank you so much, this was really helpful!

Thank you very much man. I was getting annoyed with the silly default interpretation of HTML files by TextEdit.

Take it easy ;)

thank you verymuch. this was a big help.

I'm just learning how to use a mac and this was SOOO helpful! THANK YOU!

This really helped. My Dad is making small html documents for us, when he couldn't edit them again after closing them, he got upset. This explained everything!

Lifesaver!

TexEdit was really pissing me off!!

I googled, I found this, and the problem was fixed!

Broker Jones

Hi Dave,

Thanks for that info I was having a real lot of trouble, you have saved my day! Yeah.

Thanks Again
Melanie

It is so great to have people like you out there that will help beginners like us. You saved the day!!

Thanks

I am writing an HTML document in text edit on my macbook pro and when I open up with my browser firefox (or safari) it is just displayed as the text not interpreted HTML
All the tags are still showing.

Wow, thanks! This was so frustrating
Now I don't have to consider turning on my PC *shudder*

Dave - thanks for your step-by-step. I was getting increasingly frustrated and couldn't find what I was looking for until I came across your site. Thanks for making it easy :)

Paul

Hi,
I am trying to edit the html for my website to add keywords, title etc and don't know how to do it!
I have iweb 09 version 3....

Please help as I don't want to go back to my pc to do it!!!

How i executing and running the PHP code in the mac o.s. Also i can't enable to execute the HTML code from above procedure. After that i used the the HTML file openwith in the Firefox browser then it worked.

I have the opposite problem. It only shows the HTML and not the formatted text when I open a new browser. I have checked and unchecked the Ignore rich text commands in HTML to see if there would be any difference. No change. Suggestions?

THANK YOU
I resorted to using my husband's clunky IBM from 2000 to update my site, wish I'd discovered this about a year ago. :)

Help I have a similar but slightly different problem to what you describe above. When I click on a simple html file on my desktop, it opens in Safari, which is what I want it to do, but displays like a textedit file, showing the htiml code instead of displaying as a regular we page.

thank you A LOT!!! i was getting mad!!! very clear and simple explanation! now after this thanking i go to read ALL your posts!

Thanks, this helped a lot!

P.S. To all of you unable to view pages you make in browsers, I suffered this problem for a while as well. I figured out that you have to do a couple things to the code itself:
1. Declare a !DOCTYPE in the first line of the code. If you don't know what that is, Google it.
2. Put this line of code in your head:
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
And if you are using CSS:
meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"
*I removed the >s and <s because they would not be displayed. You still have to put the brackets in your actual code.

thank you!!!!

Extremely Helpful. Thank you

I'm learning to create a web page using TextEdit on a mac. Essentially I pasted:

My big ole bad page!

Hello Joe!

and saved the file as HTML. The icon it opens in a browser (firefox or safari) just fine but all I get is the sam code back:

My big ole bad page!

Hello Joe!

and not

My big ole bad page

Hello Joe!

Help? and thanks in advance.

Thank you!!!!!!!!

You are my new demigod, as I learn to work with html, editing a site on my own computer for the first time instead of on the biz' setup. Thank you for your clear explanation!

Thanks Dave,

I'm just starting out and one goal is to change things in my website built by a friend a couple of years ago.

Your article really helped!

Best,
Jerry

SHOOOOT MAN.
You are awesome! :)
Life saver. I was about to quit. Buuuut. Good
I saw this. Thankyou.
This helped me, BIGTIME.
:-bd

Thanks Dave!

It was handy advice that worked - just when I needed it.

Praveen

Thanks Dave! I also just migrated from PC to Mac and use HTMl! You saved me!

You have saved me so much time!!

that was perfect! tks a lot!

Editing html in Mac OS X 10.6

While I can edit with TextEdit, I find also available is Dashcode. I like the colored/formatted etxt. Are there any pros/cons to use of Dashcode simply for editing (not making projects or widgets etc)? Thanks in advance!

Zeke, I don't have much experience with Dashcode, but I can't imagine why it would be a problem!

Thank you for explaining this to us. It will be a great help for many years to come.

Wow thanks! This is so helpful. :)

This is such a basic thing, but it was messing me up along with all of these other folks. And driving me nuts. Now I understand that rich text must use html tags as well. I thought maybe text editor was acting like a brower! So confusing. Thanks very much for posting this!!!!

WOW. Thanks.

This doesn't fricking work. Mac OS is worthless for editing HTML.

GREAT STEPS!! Worked for me! :)

Thank You!!!!

thanks this really helped me out!

WOW!!! This article was very helpful.

It was concise, clearly laid out, and addressed every last problem that one faces with using the mac text edit application.

Thank you!

this is really helpful thanks a lot

CHAMPION!

Thanks, Dave. This is a big help.

ORZ thanks a zillion

hello..
i am not able to see the desired webpage on safari on double clicking the .html file.
it shows the same coding that is there in text edit.
please help me for the same.

THANK YOU sooooo much!
I was getting desperate trying to open an html file to get a code.
You have been of great help breaking it down step by step in a very visual manner. When you're a newbie in this internet world it's surprising the small things that get in your way.
Once again, thank you!

Thank you very much!
You're very helpful here... the problem made me upset, but now it's solved! Wish you good days!

super duper tanx....solved ! im thrilled

I have the same problem as the two posted questions below. I did not see an answer. Please help. I don't know why this is not working.

I am writing an HTML document in text edit on my macbook pro and when I open up with my browser firefox (or safari) it is just displayed as the text not interpreted HTML
All the tags are still showing.

Help I have a similar but slightly different problem to what you describe above. When I click on a simple html file on my desktop, it opens in Safari, which is what I want it to do, but displays like a textedit file, showing the htiml code instead of displaying as a regular we page.

THANK YOU!! I never would have figured this out without tearing chunks out of my hair.

I followed all your steps & still get the web page displaying but in TextEdit, not the code. What else can I do?

Worked great. Danke!
However... after changing a file, I opened the site in "iWeb". I published the entire site, looked at the coding and the changes were not saved.
1) i read about having to rename the site, exit the Safari browser and iWeb to then view any new changes. I have done used this process in the past, it works great.
2) on the other hand i attempted this process after changing coding in TextEdit but was not successful.

any suggestions?

V/R

Francis

Hi, i wanna design my website with html codes and im using text edit, but when i open the html file with safari or firefox just displays the same as text edit file, what can i do to make the browsers open my html as a web site???

I am taking an html class, where we work on pc's using notepad. However, I work on a Mac at home. If I save my files in textedit as .htm will I be able to work with them on the pc in notepad when I go back to class?

Thanks, great help here!

Thank you so much!! This post was a lifesaver.

Thanks so much!!
i have wanted to know how to do this for such a long time!! i use snow leopard and the option is still there. thanks again!

Thank you so much!!!!! God bless

Dear Dave,
Thanks so much for this advice about text edit which is a life saver!
Like most of your viewers on this page I am new to a mac. Now that, thanks to you, I have worked out how to edit html text on textedit I am struggling to replace pictures. I select a pic in iphoto, click 'export' then 'web pg' then 'export'.. the pic appears in my web folder but not replacing the previous picture, it appears in a separate folder called 'images' and doesn't seem to relate at all to any of my original files, I can't see how to replace them. Please help!
Many thanks, Louise.

Worked perfectly for me! thanks for the tip.

Ah, that was the trick I was hoping to find. Thou art thankt.

thanks a lot, this helped out my whole class

Thanks! This enabled me to re-open my textedit html files and see my code. It was still showing as code in my browser, though, like some other still-confused people said here. I saw in TextEdit, Preferences, that under New Document, I needed to change to "plain text". That worked for new files from then on. For one I'd created already, I could now see all this rich text "html" in there that looked ok to me but it was only when I deleted all that stuff that that file opened correctly in the browser.

Dave, you're a legend! Your help was so clear and easy to understand. Thank you indeed sire.

Thanks ... you just saved my sanity.

Worked for me. Great!

u r a star! thanks for the wonderful step by step guide!

THANK YOU DAVE WORKS GREAT and I am personally astounded that Apple's default is to edit a html with Safari, which it cannot do!

Appreciate your work!
XXX
Mike

have the same prob as few others had it...when i open the html file in safari...entire code is displayed..i checked the suggested solution...declared the doc type and meta content as well in the html file code...however, it is still not opening in the web mode/formatted mode. Kindly help.

I am working with TextEdit in a MacBook Pro. OS 10.6.8. I change TextEdit default setting to Plain Text. I wrote the html and save it as .html but when I opened with Firefox or any browser the page opens in the browser window showing the exact html codes that I wrote.
For instance, I wrote a simple code to be displayed on a webpage

<html>

<head>
<title> EaseFilms Productions</title>
</head>

<body>
<h1> Pre-Production Approach </h1>
<p>
This is our best asset. The way we approach the Pre-Production phase of your film
will make the different at the time of Shooting, deal with the Post-Production, and
for Distribution.
</p>
<h4> Everything is in the details </h4>
<p>
Plan everything you will need for the production is our main goal. No time wasted.
</p>

</body>

</html>

I saved it as a .html. The default browser in my computer is set to work with Firefox, so I have now a document with the Firefox icon and the name I gave it. I double click this new document and Firefox browser opens but instead of showing the page with the Title, the body, etc. It shows the page identically as I wrote it.

Do you think you could help me to solve the problem?

I will appreciate any help.

By the way, it works fine when I use a PC and write the same .html.

Great man ... tnx

Clear, Concise and Exactly what was needed. Thank you.

Thanks so much! This was a really big help!!

Thanks for the help!

This was SOOOOO helpful!!!! It totally worked. :()

Thank you!
Textedit was driving me insane when trying to do simple tweaks when find tiny tiny tiny faults in my sites

(why did i never look in preferences?)

Thanks so much!! i thought i was going crazy trying to open my html... i'm new to mac, as you see ;)

Thank you so much! I can stop pulling my hair out now. :)

Thanks this was very helpful -- just needed to click that option in the Text Edit prefs. Working just how i need it now - viewing complete HTML text without rich formatting.