ITD 110-01L — Web Page Design I

PSPad Settings

As we discussed in class, you might find it helpful to use PSPad or another HTML-aware text editor instead of Notepad. This is not a requirement, but an hour spent mastering the features will probably be repaid many times over as you work on your class projects. Here are some settings you might find useful:

  1. Click on View on the top menu. (See Figure 1 below.) The settings here are toggles: clicking an option will turn it on if it's off or turn if off it it's on. (Unfortunately, the display doesn't show you the current state.) The options I turn on are Active Line, Syntax, Line Numbers, Special Chars, and Ruler.
  2. Click on Settings | Program Settings... | Editor - behaviour. I like having these options enabled: Auto Indent Mode, Highlight Matching Brackets, and Completion of chars ({[<"'.
  3. Set up PSPad so that it can display your web page easily in the various browsers. (See Figure 2.) Click on Settings | Highlighters Settings, then click on the tab for "External Applications". Then, for both HTML and XHTML, define three external programs (Firefox, Opera, IE). For each one, enter the name of the browser into the "Name" field; click on the "..." button to browse to the executable file; then click the "Add" button to save your entry.
  4. Set up PSPad with some default XHTML templates. You can download the templates at the class download site. (If you have problems getting at the files, read the instructions.) You should copy these files into the PSPad template directory, which is probably something like c:\program files\pspad\template. Then, when creating a new XHTML file, click on File | New file..., then click on the Use Template tab, then click on the XHTML folder to see the choices. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 1
PSPad 'view' menu

Figure 2
PSPad XHTML external applications settings

Figure 3
Create new file in PSPad


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