Notepad 2 Syntax Coloring

To work with a template you will need a text editor or html editor. One free text editor that I like is Notepad2. This is a small program to download. It requires only two files to run. It does not write to your registry and does not require an unistall routine to remove it from your computer. You just delete the files and it's removed. Nice! How easy for folks not too familiar with installing software.

Download the zipfile, unzip the files to your desktop. Double-click on the notepad2 icon and it opens the program, ready to use.

You can work on various file types including .html and what we want to set the coloring for is html files or Web Source Code.

This tutorial will show you how to set the syntax coloring for highlighting comment tags. This makes it so much easier to locate directions in your templates.



1. Click on the 'Custom Schemes' icon as shown in the picture below. This will open the 'Custom Schemes' dialog box.






2. In the left pane is a list of file types. Find and click on "Web Source Code". This will expand to show various tag types.






3. In the expanded tag list, find and click on "HTML Comment". The options in the right column will change to 'Style settings'.






4. Here is where we will set the colors of our comment tags. First, click on the button that shows "Fore...". A color pallette will open to set the color for the text of your comment tag. I chose black or #000000. Click OK.






5. Next click on the button that shows 'Back...' Again choose a color for the background of your comment tag. I chose yellow or #ffff00. You could choose light pink, light turquoise or any color you like to make the comments tags stand out........but the text and background colors will need to be contrasting so the comment tag will be legible.






6. Now the Fore and Back colors have been set. Click the OK button.





7. Now any time you open a template that has the .html, .htm extension the comment tags will be highlighted. Because of the colors I chose, mine look like. <!-- Comment Tag -->

** NOTE that the highlighting will not be automatic if you open a template file that has been saved as a text file. This would have the .txt extension.