How To Setup Notepad++ For Web Design

Notepad++ is a powerful specialised text editor and source code editor for windows which helps programmer to write down codes, edit files and push files to and from the remote web server. It is a replacement of simple notepad that supports several languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, ASP.net, SQL, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, VB, Java, Python, perl, etc. Notepad++ is free for windows and you can download and install it by going to notepad-plus-plus.org in your web-browser. So in this post we're going to discuss about how you can setup notepad++ for better performance in web-designing. Please keep in mind this post is for the one who want to start web-designing as a career with Notepad++.

If you have notepad++ installed in your computer than its ok but if you don't have such program installed then visit this link to download and install it.

So, after opening Notepad++ go ahead and create a new file by pressing (ctrl+N) in your keyboard or Click on "File" and then "New". So this is the coding area for inputting computer languages.

At first, we need to tell Notepad++ which language is going to be used overtime and as default, the program is treating it as a "Normal Text File". In Web Design HTML is the foundation of the website. So, to specify the language as HTML we need to go to the "Language" menu option and under "H" choose HTML. Now you notice that in the down-left corner of the Notepad++ program there is written Hyper Text Markup Language File. This means that the language we're going to put will be read as an HTML document.

Now we have to set HTML as default for each new document, by doing this we need not to set HTML all the time when we open a new document to write codes. So to do this step go to the setting menu at first and then preferences. Click on the "New Document Default Directory" and now go to the "Default Language" drop down menu. Open that up and choose HTML. Also you have to click on the UTF-8 radio button and then click on close. Now all the file will automatically save as an HTML file.

When  you type tags into HTML document you'll get a drop down menu of related HTML tags that will help you for quick typing HTML tags. To do this you have to activate a "Help Prompt Feature". To activate his feature just go to settings and then preferences. Click on the "Backup/Auto completion" tab and then choose "Enable auto-completion on each input" by clicking on its checkbox. Again choose "Function Parameters Hint on Input" by clicking on its checkbox. Then click on "Close".

At last we need to setup a plugin called Text FX. This plugin helps you to save time by keeping HTML tags properly closed. So to do this you need to go to the plugins than scroll down to the 'Plugin Manager' and then "Show Plugin Manager". In the plugin manager you will see all the plugins currently available for Notepad++. Scroll down to find the "Text FX Characters". Click on the "Text FX Character" option and then install it and then click on "Yes" to restart the Notepad++. Again "Yes" to make the changes. Now you will see there is an option on the menu bar called Text FX. Click on the "Text FX" option and then scroll down to Text FX settings. In the settings make sure that the  "+Autoclose XHTML/XML<Tag>" is properly checked. If not then click on that option to to select (✔). Now if you write HTML tags then it will close automatically.