textedit difficulties on a mac?

Question

I am an absolute beginner at html. I'm trying my hand at very basic web page stuff. I keep running into a wall whenever I try to use an apostrophe in textedit. I keep getting special characters when I choose to view my work in the web page.

Answer 1

Try TextWrangler for Mac. It's free and it rocks! TextEditor is not really meant for coding. It's fine as a word processor and can do some formatting but that's it.



TextWrangler, on the other hand, can handle everything from html, javascript, xml, php, any code language. There are all sorts of tools and plugins, and their support documents are easy to follow and extensive. It's to die for if you are a coder.

Answer 2

In response to your previous question we told you



a) how to switch to plain formatting

b) to use an more suitable editor



If you don't follow good advice, why ask a question in the first place?

Answer 3

It's not the editor; the web browser it simply interpreting things as it is programmed to do.



There are certain characters that have special meanings in html and cannot be directly used in a web page - you have to use "html entities" where you want those characters to appear.



Apostrophe is one of the special characters and you have to use

'



[or the equivalent numeric code] anywhere you want one...



There is a full list of such special characters and the text / numeric entities that display them, here:

https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp

Answer 4

I wish I could help, I have briefly used Apple products but never owned one. You might try Google search.

Answer 5

Sorry for not finishing my explanation fully. Is there something I can change in the preferences for textedit that will allow me to use apostrophes?