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Thank you to everyone who weighed in on free HTML text editors for my old Macs running 10.5.8. The only one that seemed to work is Thimble. My Macs at school are just too old - even for cloud-based editors. I looked into CodeAnywhere and Codio, which both worked on my Mac at home but not at work. Just in case anyone is interested in a compilation, I have compiled. I really appreciate everyone's help and forgive me if I missed one or two responses: There is no reason to install an editor for this purpose. Mozilla has a suite of free apps for this purpose at Webmaker: https://webmaker.org Thimble is the editor, and I think it's very nice for students that there is immediate feedback so you can see how your change affects the rendering: https://thimble.webmaker.org/ -- As a bit of a left field alternative there’s always Vim. Ok it might not be the best introduction to text editors, but given it exists on pretty much every platform (including Android and iPhone/iPad - http://www.vim.org/download.php) there’d be no excuses for not doing the homework. The main Mac port (https://code.google.com/p/macvim/) has legacy versions back to 10.4. However, this might be more of an extra credit editor given that it takes *some* getting used to. There is a game (http://vim-adventures.com/) which can help with learning some of the basic Vim controls. -- I used to use Smultron (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15114/smultron) on my PowerBook G3. It's no Sublime text, but it does a pretty good job as far as GUI based text editors goes. I think someone forked the project and it's known as Fraise now. Depending on your computer's capabilities, that might be better or worse to run. -- Well... you could see if SeaMonkey runs - it includes Composer which gives you both WYSIWIG and HTML source editing - or it's later derivatives NVU and Komposer. Since those are relatively old, they should run on a circa 2008 Mac. Of course any text editor will let you edit HTML - and, assuming you're running OS X, you've got unix underneath. You've pretty much got your pick of anything that will run in a console window or an X-window. Your real problem might be running a browser that's new enough to support HTML5 and CSS3. Otherwise, editing HTML isn't going to do you much good. Apple won't let the most recent version of Safari run on 10.6.8 (you're stuck at 5.1.10), but Firefox (38.0.1) and Chrome (42.0.2311.152) are both fine. -- Another thing you might want to check out - my alma mater has a CS MOOC that's aimed at supporting middle/high school CS classes and teachers - http://www.muddx.com/courses/HMC/MyCS/Middle-years_Computer_Science/about . -- You might want to check out https://openhatch.org/wiki/Boston_Python_Workshop_6/Friday/OSX_text_editor - Boston Python Workshop has spent a while coming up with bulletproof instructions for people with a wide range of experience. The links at that page no longer work but the files are still available at Sourceforge, so you can make an amended version easily enough. -- > If you do not need all the bells and whistles I would recommend > TextWrangler. Free versions should still be available online and its > bigger brother BBEdit is overkill for basic web editing. Actually, the significant difference between TextWrangler and BBEdit is that BBEdits has a number of features that are specifically for web design, that don't exist in TextWrangler. Looking at the version of BBEdit 9.1 that I have installed, the majority of it is in the 'Markup' menu: * Close current tag / Balance tags * Check syntax * Check links * Check accessibility * Cleaners for GoLive/PageMill/HomePage/DreamWeaver * Convert to HTML / XHTML * Menu items to insert tags (which then give what attributes are allowed) * Menu item to insert CSS * Preview in ... (gives a list of installed web browsers) ... That said, TextWrangler is still a good free editor -- and I personally rarely ever use the insert tags/CSS items (as I've been writing HTML for ... crap ... I feel old ... 20+ years). But to say that BBEdit is overkill for web editing is just wrong -- the majority of the feature differences are *specifically* for web editing. -- There is always the good old standby of emacs: http://aquamacs.org/ -- > The Macs are from 2008 and running I believe 10.6.8. > > I can double check that when I get to work, but I am right now working on a 2007 Mac running 10.6.8 so the ones at work might be running a slightly newer version, but they are definitely running OS 10 something. > This eliminates Atom.io and Sublime Text 3 (emphases on 3 because it *may* work with Sublime Text 2). I'm having a hard time calling those old ;-) but that's computing for you these days. I'm thinking TextWrangler will be your best bet to be honest. ____________________________________________ Patricia Sarles, MA (Anthropology), MLS Librarian Jerome Parker Campus Library 100 Essex Drive Staten Island, NY 10314 718-370-6900 x1322 [log in to unmask] http://jeromeparkercampus.libguides.com/home You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. - Naguib Mahfouz As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. - Benjamin Disraeli