Notepad ++ is the current king when it comes to the task of code and text editors on Windows. The number 1 position is occupied by Notepad++ because it is not only used for text: it Those of us who use a Mac have to look for alternatives, and unfortunately, there are not many of them in the market.
Apologies for the noob question, but I just bought my first MacBook having been a Windows user all my life. I use ‘Notepad’ on Windows to edit the HTML code on my own website, but I can’t find a Mac equivalent. The best I’ve been able to find is TextEdit. I selected the option to ‘Make Plain Text’, but it still looks completely different to how it did on Notepad. It includes some styling that’s in an external style sheet, and has some Apple-related code that I’ve never seen before (and I wrote all the code for this site from scratch on Notepad, so I know every character of it). Is there an app or an option to have just a totally simple text editor, that does zero auto-formatting and displays text exactly as I type it? Specifically, one that will work with HTML & CSS files?
![Notepad plus for mac Notepad plus for mac](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125513656/688588196.png)
I was messing around with a copied version of a page I use, and somewhere this version got some extra code added to it. I think that happened in TextEdit, although I don't understand why.
Using the original version of this file in Atom or Sublime Text (as another user recommended to me), it displays as normal. An example of the code from the original file is: - JW Rolling - 6th January '18 I've now been in Bangkok at least once per year, for eight straight calendar years (2011 to 2018). It's strange for me to say that, because it feels like only recently, that all I knew of Thailand was what I'd seen in Rambo IV, which I'd watched in South America. To go from that, to being here for eight straight years makes me realise. Life is happening.
This same code after I opened it on TextEdit is: - JW Rolling - 6th January '18 I've now been in Bangkok at least once per year, for eight straight calendar years (2011 to 2018). It's strange for me to say that, because it feels like only recently, that all I knew of Thailand was what I'd seen in Rambo IV, which I'd watched in South America. To go from that, to being here for eight straight years makes me realise. Life is happening.
A good text editor you could use is Sublime Text. It's technically free (since the only non-benefit from using the trial version is you get occasionally nagged about buying the full product), and it can do all of the things you'd want from a text editor: simple, free and fast text editor Sublime Text can be customized as much as you want using the available for it, so if you want to keep it as simple as possible you can. It's also kinda-sorta-technically free as mentioned before, and it's very fast. Highlighting errors Using some excellent you can install fairly easily using the Plugin Manager, you can have errors highlighted as you type, or whenever you save, among some other options. Colour-coding keywords and variables differently (I'm assuming you mean syntax highlighting) Sublime Text can do syntax highlighting fairly well.
Here are some examples: Sublime Text also has build systems and useful keyboard shortcuts and commands which can speed things up quite a lot. Most notably of these features is the command palette, a 'center for commands' where you can execute most of the editor's functions by just searching.
Another text editor you could use is, Sublime Text's 'spiritual predecessor.' While I don't know the ins-and-outs of TextEdit, since I am a Windows user, it seems like a good Mac-only alternative if you don't want to use Sublime Text. And if you really want to be able to dedicate yourself to a text editor, you can try Vim and/or Emacs.
Be warned though, since these editors aren't very simple to use and require a long-term commitment to use.