Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

TextEdit

TextEdit is a very simple word processor with some surprisingly powerful formatting controls built right in. There’s even a multiple-level Undo command.

Editing HTML Documents

If you drag an HTML (Web page) document onto the TextEdit icon, the program shows you the page as it’s designed to look—like a Web page—rather than displaying the behind-the-scenes HTML commands.

This behavior can be something of an annoyance if you’re trying to use TextEdit to edit the raw HTML code. In that case, you have two options:

• Change the way TextEdit handles all HTML documents. Choose TextEdit → Preferences, and turn on “Ignore rich text commands in HTML files,” as seen in the top portion of Figure 11-24. Close the dialog box. All future HTML files will now open as documents you can edit.

Figure 11-24. In the File → Open dialog box, turn on “Ignore rich text commands” to prevent TextEdit from displaying an HTML file graphically.

• S pecify how HTML pages open on a document-by-document basis. Choose File → Open. In the dialog box that appears, select the document you want to open, and then turn on “Ignore rich text commands,” as shown in the bottom portion of Figure 11-24. TextEdit dutifully opens the file with all HTML codes visible and ready to edit.

The Secret Zoom Command

In its factory-set state, TextEdit lacks a general zoom feature to let you increase or decrease the display size of your current ...