A Simple Text Editor Named Notepad
What do you need to hand code (X)HTML? That is easy! For Windows PC users, Notepad will do nicely. You should already find Notepad installed. Look under Start>Program Files>Accessories>Notepad.
Notepad will work similarly to a word processor, but it doesn’t come with a lot of fancy formatting buttons and tools.
An option I find very helpful is the "word wrap" feature. Choose Format>Word Wrap. This automatically will wrap your html code to fit nicely in the window.
Format>Font will allow you to change the font used to code your page. I suggest keeping a monospace font (like Courier) to keep your characters in order. But feel free to enlarge or reduce the font size. It will have no effect on what is viewed on your own Web page, it only changes the look of your code in Notepad.
Newer versions of Notepad also include the Find and Replace feature, along with the ability to insert the Date and Time into your page. You will find both these options on the Edit menu.
Other Windows Text Editors
Notepad is a very basic text editor (about as basic as it gets,) but there are a few other choices that are a little more "user-friendly" than Notepad.
Other text/ascii editors:
- TextPad (free trial)
(Please read the terms of use for any programs you download.)
