Dear Saligman Students from Friday's Make Your Own Web Page Group,

Here are the instructions I promised on how to finish the web page that you began with me on Friday.

You guys were great. I think you have the potential to be great programmers.

Sincerely,
Rabbi Shai Gluskin

  1. Go to applications and open the TextEdit program.
  2. Go to TextEdit --> Preferences
    Screen shot of location of the File Preferences menu.
  3. There are changes to be made in both the New Document and Open and Save tabs.
    1. Select the left tab, New Document
    2. Select Plain text.
      Screen shot of where to choose the plain text preference in TextEdit's Preferences.
    3. Next, click on the right tab: Open and Save.
    4. Uncheck the box that says Add ".txt" extension to plain text files.
    5. Check the box that says Ignore rich text commands in HTML files.
      Screen shot of the preference shows under the preferences open and save tab
    6. Close out of the preferences window.
  4. Now our TextEdit application is ready. Next you need to retrieve the code you created on Friday. But don't use TextEdit to do that. Using Safari, open the file you created on Friday. It's likely to be found in your Documents folder or on your Desktop. When you open it, it will probably look something like this:
    Screen shot of Safari page with html code instead of intended content
  5. Highlight and copy the code that appears in the Safari window that you wrote on Friday.
  6. Go to Applications --> TextEdit

  7. Screen shot of new TextEdit window with no formatting options display as it is in plain text mode.Correct! This what TextEdit should like, with no formatting tools at the top of the window.
    Screen shot of new TextEdit window with formatting options displayed. That means that TextEdit is not in plain text mode as it should be. Wrong If TextEdit looks like this, start these instructions over.
  8. Paste the code you copied from the Safari window into the empty TextEdit window. If you couldn't find your file, or if you want to start from scratch, here is some new sample code you can use. Copy and paste the code below into your blank TextEdit window. Customize the content to make it yours:
    <html>
    <head>
    <title>Instructions for Creating a Web Page</title>
    <body>
    <p>There are many steps in creating a web page.</p>
    <p>But it is not so hard, really!</p> </body>
    </html>
  9. Here is an image of the code in your TextEdit window:
    Screen shot code pasted into TextEdit plain text window.
  10. Save the document. Give it any name you want, but make sure
    screen shot of the save-as dialogue which shows a file name that ends in .html
  11. Open the file you just saved in Safari and voila! A web page, that you programmed:
    screen shot of the successfully produced web page viewed in Safari.To edit your web page, you must open the file from within TextEdit. Remember you'll need to save the file before you can see your changes take affect in Safari. If you have left your Safari window open while you were editing in TextEdit, you'll need to refresh Safari before you'll be able to see your changes.

    screen shot of Safari's refresh icon.This is the icon for the refresh button in Safari.

This may seem like a lot of work to create a web page that is so simple. But working with code is very powerful and creative. You've gone through the key steps of creating the file and learning the essential “tags” that make up any page. From here you can go on to learning how to format, add color, backgrounds and photos to your web pages.

One of many good online resources is htmldog.com

And do let your teachers know if you are interested in learning more programming skills for the web or other applications.