Creating an HTML file in Windows Explorer

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First, create a folder for your new Web project, and click on it so you're in the new folder.

Then, create a new text file. This can be achieved by right-clicking on the white background and chosing New -> Text Document

This will create a new text file; and you can give it a name ("a" in this case).

Behind the scenes, this file is really called "a.txt", but Microsoft Windows hides the file ending when it knows what sort of file it is. This makes it hard to change the file from a text file to an HTML file.

We want it to be an HTML file so that it opens in Internet Explorer or Firefox when we click on it.

To rename it, we need to un-hide the file ending. This is achieved from the "Tools" menu, under "Folder Options"

In the Folder Options popup, un-tick the entry entitled Hide extensions for known file types

and click "OK".

You will notice any icons on your desktop will change too. Word documents will have ".doc" added to the end, and our newly created text file will now be called "a.txt".

We can now rename the file. One way to do this is to right-click on the file and choose the Rename option.

You will now be able to edit the name of the file, including the ending. Change the ending to ".html". Hit "Enter" when you have changed the name.

Windows will tell you that you're doing something dangerous (yeah, right!!), and will give you a popup. Click on Yes (or hit enter).

The file has now become a Web Page (even though there is nothing in it!) and the icon will change, either to a blue "e", or the Firefox logo as here.

You can now edit the HTML file by right-clicking on it and chosing Open With -> Notepad

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