Notepad: Editing HTML

Editing the HTML Codes

Netscape Composer, WordPerfect 8, Microsoft Word, AOL Press--these are all authoring tools of the type nicknamed "WYSIWYG"--"what you see is what you get." You do not have to type the codes to turn your work into HTML format--the authoring tool does it for you.

At any time, you can examine the codes the composer has been writing for you by looking at View--Page Source (in either the Browser or the Composer). You can't copy or print these codes, but you can see what sorts of codes the program is using.

To edit the codes themselves, you need to use the most basic wordprocessing program available. Programs like WordPerfect put in their own, invisible formatting codes which interfere with the HTML coding. Programs like Notepad, Wordpad, and Simpletext will allow you to access and save your document without adding codes.

(Note: if you are doing more complex work, requiring a search-and-change of the HTML codes themselves, you may need to use a more sophisticated word-processor, but you must be careful, then, to save your modified text as ASCII or DOS text, to strip out the extra codes.) On the lab computers, the most basic wordprocessor is Notepad (look under the Start menu, Programs, Accessories). If you open an .htm file using Notepad, you will see all the coding as well as the text, and you can change the codes, or add new ones that may be harder to add using a WYSIWYG composer.

One problem that sometimes occurs is that image or other local files are capitalized incorrectly, or extra letters are copied, by Netscape. This is easily fixed using Notepad.