Web Developer & Photographer
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TextEdit is one of those applications on the Mac that you don’t hear a whole lot about. In the past I have been using TextWrangler and Smultron for my text editing. By text editing, I mean coding with HTML, CSS, PHP, and more. When I first opened TextEdit, I immediately knew how to make simple documents and change the text and format. After some messing around, I came across an easy configuration that would make it possible to code in TextEdit:

  1. Open up TextEdit from the Applications folder in Finder.
  2. Go to Preferences under the TextEdit menu.
  3. Once the Preferences window pops up, go to the Open and Save tab.
  4. Under the “When opening a file:” section, put a check mark in the “Ignore rich text commands in HTML files” checkbox.
  5. After you have done that, go back to your Textedit document and look under the Format menu for an option called “Make Plain Text”.
  6. Now you can code anything from HTML to Javascript inside of TextEdit.
  7. One tip before you start coding, make sure you add “.html” to the filename when you save it.

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