All HTML files are text files. To create a text file you need an application that allows you to create plain text without throwing in a lot of fancy formatting and special characters. You just need plain, pure text.

We'll use TextEdit on the Mac in this book; however, if you prefer another text editor, that should work fine as well. And, if you're running Windows, you'll want to skip ahead a couple of pages to the Windows instructions.

Step one:

Navigate to your Applications

folder The TextEdit application is in the Applications folder. The easiest way to get there is to choose "New Finder Window" from the Finder's File menu and then look for the Application directly in your shortcuts. When you've found it, click on Applications.

step two:

Locate and run TextEdit

You'll probably have lots of applications listed in your applications folder, so scroll down until you see TextEdit. To run the application, double click on the TextEdit icon.

Your Finder shortcuts.

step three (optional):

Keep TextEdit in your Dock If you want to make your life easier, click and hold on the TextEdit icon in the Dock (this icon appears once the application is running). When it displays a popup menu, choose "Keep in Dock." That way, the TextEdit icon will always appear in your Dock and you won't have to hunt it down in the Applications folder every time you need to use it.

Step four:

Change your TextEdit Preferences

By default, TextEdit is in "rich text" mode, which means it will add its own formatting and special characters to your file when you save it not what you want. So, you'll need to change your TextEdit Preferences so that TextEdit saves your work as a pure text file. To do this, first choose the "Preferences" menu item from the TextEdit menu.

This text formatting menu means you're in "rich text" mode. If you see these, you need to change your preferences.

Step five

Set Preferences for Plain text

Once you see the Preferences dialog box, there are three things you need to do.

First, choose "Plain text" as the default editor mode in the New Document tab.

Second, in the "Open and Save" tab, make sure that the "Add .txt extension to plain text files" is unchecked.

Last, make sure "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files" is checked.

That's it; to close the dialog box click on the red button in the top left corner.

Step six:

Quit and restart Now quit out of TextEdit by choosing Quit from the TextEdit menu, and then restart the application. This time, you'll see a window with no fancy text formatting menus at the top of the window. You're now ready to create some HTML.

See, the formatting menu is gone: that means we're in text mode.