Web Editing on Mac

[will.appleby]

Hi

I've recently moved to using a mac instead of a PC and am now trying to
create a website. I have been using Iweb to do the basics, and
generally it's been fairly easy, however I would like to add a photo
gallery. I have installed gallery (gallery.menalto.com) on the server
and am now trying to integrate it with my website. Having looked on
the gallery support website, I see there is some HTML code I can use,
but cannot find a way to edit the html files created by Iweb.

I have had fairly basic experiance of web editing on the PC - I either
just used a text editor to edit the code with no difficulties, but on
the mac, when I try to open the html file with TextEdit it just shows
the html file. Alternatively, my preferred way of doing this was to
use a program such as dreamweaver to simply switch between html and web
view.

Please can anyone suggest either how I go about editing HTML on the
mac, or any web editing software which is either free or relatively
cheap which would make this sort of thing easier.

If you have any experience with gallery, or any other photo gallery you
could recommend, any tips for integrating it would be much appreciated.
Am I right in believing I need to download the theme.pl file from my
server and add my html code to it?

Any help you can give would be very much appreciated.

Will

 

[dorayme]

Hi

I've recently moved to using a mac instead of a PC and am now trying to
create a website. ....
I have had fairly basic experiance of web editing on the PC - I either
just used a text editor to edit the code with no difficulties, but on
the mac, when I try to open the html file with TextEdit it just shows
the html file.

What are you expecting it to show? A hat with a rabbit being
pulled out of it?

What do you mean "just shows the html file"? Why is this not
exactly what you want so that you can dive in and change the text
in it?

Anyway... don't use textEdit at all for this. Get TextWrangler
(it is a free text editor and excellent for editing html and css
plain text files)

If you want help around here, it helps to post a url, even one
with a sad and pathetic attempt at a site. They shun you like the
plague without one.

 

[patrick j]

Please can anyone suggest either how I go about editing HTML on the
mac, or any web editing software which is either free or relatively
cheap which would make this sort of thing easier.

Hi

As dorayme has suggested TextWrangler is free and very good for editing
HTML.

You can get it here:

<http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml>

A cheap HTML editor, that I've never used personally, but has many fans
is Page Spinner which comes from here:

<http://www.optima-system.com/pagespinner/>

Your experience with TextEdit is not unsurprising because the name
suggests rather that it will behave as you thought it would, open the
HTML file showing the mark up. I think TextEdit is an oddly named
application but it is very useful indeed for other things. If you
explore it a bit you'll find it is a surprisingly capable word
processor with quite good table creating capabilities and the like.

However, I think you'll find TextWrangler behaves as you anticipated
TextEdit was going to.

Best of luck with the Mac. I think once you get the hang of it you'll
find you really like it.

 

[will.appleby]

Thank you both for your comments. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear
about what I was expecting TextEdit to do. I had expected it to show
me the HTML code which I could then edit, rather than showing the file
as it would be displayed on a website.

I will have a play with TextWrangler and depending how I get on, will
post again with further queries.

Thanks

Will

 

[Nikita the Spider]

Thank you both for your comments. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear
about what I was expecting TextEdit to do. I had expected it to show
me the HTML code which I could then edit, rather than showing the file
as it would be displayed on a website.

I will have a play with TextWrangler and depending how I get on, will
post again with further queries.

Will,
TextEdit displays text. If you saw your HTML file as it would be
rendered in a Web browser, then it wasn't TextEdit that showed it to
you.

TextEdit can do the job you want it to do (edit HTML source) but as
others have said, TextWrangler is free and is much nicer to use for
editing HTML source than plain ol' TextEdit.

Happy coding

 

[dorayme]

...Sorry if I didn't make myself clear
about what I was expecting TextEdit to do. I had expected it to show
me the HTML code which I could then edit, rather than showing the file
as it would be displayed on a website.

You never said how you tried to open the source file in the first
place: Did you locate a source.html file and double click it?
Instead, try control click and choose "open with" TextEdit.

 

[Leonard Blaisdell]

You never said how you tried to open the source file in the first
place: Did you locate a source.html file and double click it?
Instead, try control click and choose "open with" TextEdit.

Or a more tiresome but time honored method. Drag the file onto the
TextEdit icon if you want to open it as a text file. Drag the file onto
the Safari icon if you want it to open as HTML that Safari will render.
Drag the file onto the Firefox icon if you want to open it as HTML that
Firefox will render. Drag the file onto the iCab icon if you want to
open it as HTML that iCab will render. If the application won't accept
the file, It won't highlight when you drag the file onto it.

leo

 

[patrick j]

Will,
TextEdit displays text.

Hello Nikita the Spider and dorayme

TextEdit does not display the HTML markup on my Mac OS X 10.4.8. Maybe
there is something different about the program for me than for you.

If I open a .html file in textEdit then it will display as a browser
will display that file, it will not display the HTML mark up text for
editing.

This is the experience that Will has as well I think.

Perhaps I have the pref's set a certain way or something, but certainly
TextEdit is not behaving for me as it seems to be for you or dorayme.

 

[patrick j]

Thank you both for your comments. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear
about what I was expecting TextEdit to do. I had expected it to show
me the HTML code which I could then edit, rather than showing the file
as it would be displayed on a website.

Hi

For me TextEdit behaves exactly as it does for you. It will display the
..html file as if it were in a browser window.

I will have a play with TextWrangler and depending how I get on, will
post again with further queries.

I think you will find that TextWrangler behaves as you wish. As it
happens I use the "pay for" version of TextWrangler which is BBEdit,
and this is a very capable text editor indeed with many useful extras
for HTML creation but it is quite pricey for a text editor.

 

[patrick j]

Or a more tiresome but time honored method. Drag the file onto the
TextEdit icon if you want to open it as a text file.

Not on my OS X 10.4.8 it won't

drag the .html file to the TextEdit icon and TextEdit will display the
file as a web browser would display it, albeit with editable content,
but not such that you would be able to edit the html tags.

 

[Nikita the Spider]

Hello Nikita the Spider and dorayme

TextEdit does not display the HTML markup on my Mac OS X 10.4.8. Maybe
there is something different about the program for me than for you.

I'm on 10.3.9; sorry if I misled you. IMHO the behavior you describe
sounds pretty annoying for a text editor. If I want to edit text, it's
only logical that I'd turn to something called "TextEdit" to do so,
while if I want to view rendered HTML, the application name "Safari"
suggests that perfectly. Er, well, actually Safari suggests something
more like a pith-helmeted, khaki-clad white male on the African plains
blasting away at a charging rhino while the "help" does all the hard
work of carrying stuff, beating the grass for snakes, etc. That's
nothing at all like viewing a Web page which kind of undermines my
argument but I'm not one to be persuaded by logic when my opinion is
threatened.

 

[Leonard Blaisdell]

Not on my OS X 10.4.8 it won't

Nor on 10.3.9. The idiot you responded to ought do his homework.
In his defense, he had yet to contemplate such a stupid thing would
happen.
I couldn't find an obvious way to change the behavior in TextEdit prefs
either.
Ah, here it is in the Help section for TextEdit. Select "Ignore rich
text commands in HTML files". Now I'll try it. Yeah, that works. So the
answer for TextEdit is to do that.
Now I'll go back to BBEdit.

leo

 

[patrick j]

In his defense, he had yet to contemplate such a stupid thing would
happen.

I think it is very reasonable to expect an application called TextEdit
to behave like a "text editor"

I was quite surprised when I discovered that it will open .html files
displaying the HTML as if it were a browser window myself.

Like you I use BBEdit for actual "text editing" on the Mac.

I've now changed the preferences on TextEdit so that it will "ignore
rich text commands in HTML files" myself and I'm grateful to you for
pointing this out.

Personally I think that TextEdit is not a very good name for the
program which has a role analogous perhaps to WordPad on the PC, but
not Notepad.

 

[patrick j]

I'm on 10.3.9; sorry if I misled you. IMHO the behavior you describe
sounds pretty annoying for a text editor. If I want to edit text, it's
only logical that I'd turn to something called "TextEdit" to do so,

Yes it does seem to make sense I do feel "TextEdit" is rather a bad
name for the application. Leonard Blaisdell has spotted that there is a
preference for changing this behaviour. If "Ignore Rich Text commands
in HTML files" is checked then TextEdit will display the HTML for
editing, otherwise it will try to display the page like a web-browser.

while if I want to view rendered HTML, the application name "Safari"
suggests that perfectly. Er, well, actually Safari suggests something
more like a pith-helmeted, khaki-clad white male on the African plains
blasting away at a charging rhino while the "help" does all the hard
work of carrying stuff, beating the grass for snakes, etc. That's
nothing at all like viewing a Web page which kind of undermines my
argument but I'm not one to be persuaded by logic when my opinion is
threatened.

I think Safari is a daft name as well. I don't think Cyberdog on the
classic OS was particularly inspired either but better than Safari and
at least a bit fun

On the subject of web-browser names one with a fairly good name imho is
the one I like least which is Internet Explorer. My only feeling about
it is that it would perhaps have been better named "Web Explorer".

I think Netscape Navigator is not a bad name, but Firefox is really a
very strange name although a very good browser of course. Other good
browsers with strange names are iCab, suggesting an internet taxi, then
there's Opera suggesting, well, an Opera? Camino is a bit weird as
well. I'm sure there's a very good explanation for these names.

Having given it a bit of thought but not very much I think the best
named browser is <drum roll>

OmniWeb

But that's just my opinion.

Having said that I don't actually use OmniWeb myself, but I think it is
a good name.

 

[Nikita the Spider]

Yes it does seem to make sense I do feel "TextEdit" is rather a bad
name for the application. Leonard Blaisdell has spotted that there is a
preference for changing this behaviour. If "Ignore Rich Text commands
in HTML files" is checked then TextEdit will display the HTML for
editing, otherwise it will try to display the page like a web-browser.

Which also exists in 10.3.9, but I apparently switched it off so long
ago that I forgot it existed. Apologies for the mistake, and thanks to
Leonard for pointing it out. I also use BBEdit and was willing to pay
for it because I thought TextWrangler was nifty.