So I made the switch to a mac.

so what takes place of notepad or wordpad?

[automotivetouchup]

I made the switch to the new Imac from a windows only user, however learning a new system is tough I do not know what I am loooking for. I need a program that will let me write html, like notepad.

[pageoneresults]

I believe the native program on your system is SimpleText [developer.apple.com].

<added>Although that may not be a good replacement for NotePad.

Here's the replacement... BBEdit

[mivox]

On OSX systems, what you get pre-installed is TextEdit, which does have a plain-text setting (and also does a dandy job of RichText and translating .doc files).

However, I'd strongly recommend investing in BBEdit. The extra functions are MORE than worth the price.

[timster]

BBEdit is definitely well worth the money. But if you're not looking to spend money right now, you might look into jEdit.

Check out Apple's site for a good list of development tools:

[apple.com ]

[automotivetouchup]

thanks guys, I ended up getting the macromedia suite.
I had it for windows, but they let me cross platforms...... shhh they weren't suposed to let me but I am a student and all they use are macs there anyway. Macromedia has a great customer service. In windows I used notepad to write and edit html files. And when I used one of the ones mention ealier in this thread it renamed whatever.css to whatever.css.doc or whatever it did rename it too.

[mivox]

it renamed whatever.css to whatever.css.doc

If that was TextEdit, make sure you had the file set to plain text, not RichText... (It an option in one of the top drop-down menus) And there should be an option in the save dialog (a checkbox, I think) that lets you turn off the append file suffix function.

[goldcougar]

Check out this recent thread where we posted some of our best apps: [webmasterworld.com...]

For HTML, I prefer Taco HTML Editor, [tacosw.com...] . It color codes the HTML, has GUI for insertion of special characters, and gives a preview.

[photon]

Smultron a another (free) option.

[Greenman]

bbedit is simply the best but it does cost $199. I would suggest new Mac users start out with Text Wrangler (by the same folks that make bbedit) and see if it meets their needs. The best part? Text Wrangler is now totally free and incorporates 90% of bbedit's feaatures! The guys at Bare Bones software simply ROCK.

[barebones.com...]

[whoisgregg]

TextWrangler is free now? That's awesome... It must have just happened recently.

[mivox]

Right on! I bought bbedit back when it was much cheaper, so the upgrade price is rarely an issue for me... but I started on bbedit light, which must be what TextWrangler is the equivalent of now.