How to view TextEdit file as a webpage

[*charley*]

Hi,

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but here's my problem:

I want to create a webpage using TextEdit, so I typed in some html code, and saved the file as .html

Then (without uploading the file to the internet) I opened Firefox and hit file>open and selected my file, expecting to see the actual webpage. But instead all I saw was the html source code. This was the same in Safari.

When I used to build websites using Notepad on the PC, you could view your pages without uploading, since the files were on your computer. Is this possible on the mac? I need to view as I go to check that my code is working right, but I don't really want to upload until the page is working perfectly.

Thanks,
Char

 

[Mal]

Make sure you didn't save it as rich text, and that it didn't append a hidden extension to the end of the file name (usually it won't if you added the .html on the end though). The rich text thing gets a lot of people.

jW

 

[miles01110]

If Mal's suggestion doesn't work, make sure you've formatted your HTML correctly. Like make sure you have the html and body tags, etc...

For a more permanent solution, I'd recommend an actual html editor or a text editor that supports html tagging (Textmate, BBEdit, etc). You can find open source ones with google (I think Nvu is one of them).

 

[*charley*]

Solved!

Thanks guys! It was the rich text thing - despite the .html file extension there was something about ignoring rich text commands which needed checking in the Preferences menu.

*Yay* - freedom from the PC at last - using Notepad was the last thing I was still clinging to!