HTML pages are rendered by a Web browser
Browsers are quite happy to load those files from your hard drive, a flash drive or a DVD. This means that you can test your Web pages without a server. For now just create a folder/directory and put all your pages into it along with images and stylesheets for those pages.
File names
To make this more reliable always follow these guidelines:
- Never use spaces in the file names
- Either don't use capitals at all or use them with care
- Don't use special characters - just text and numbers plus maybe _ and -
- Make sure the file extension is .html or .htm (preferably the first)*
Windows problems
Some versions of Windows have a habit of making the first letter of a file a capital. This will be fine while you are testing files locally but as soon as you upload them to a server you may have problems as Fred.html and fred.html are two different file names. It is safest to turn off this Windows "feature" now in Folder Options
*Windows Notepad problems
Windows Notepad users need to be especially careful about saving files as Windows hides some file extensions and Notepad automatically adds a .txt as the extension. So you might think you had saved a file called fred.html but it will become fred.html.txt (only you will not see the .txt because Windows hides it!). To avoid this problem:
- Use the menu to File - Save or press ctrl and s
- In the dialog box near the bottom change Text Documents to All Files
- Type in the name you want and save the file
If you double click on a file and it opens in Notepad then it has probably got a hidden extension. Go to Tools - Folder Options - View tab and take the tick out of Hide known extensions. Now you can rename the file and get rid of the .TXT on the end.
