how to use IE Developer Tools with out IE

Question

Hi All,

I fear this will be a stupid question but I will go ahead and ask it any way. I am starting to learn (X)HTML and am looking beyond the notepad.exe text editor. I know there are many tools such as notepad++ but I do not want to learn the tools themselves right now.

When I use IE8 and click view source, it gives me perfectly what I want. Minium tool learning. I know by F12 I can get the IE developer tools. But my question is how can I launch the IE developer tools with out lauching explorer. I just want to use this tool to learn (X)HTML, save file and open them.

Any way to do this. I dont see any save file commands in tools.

Sorry there. Just found the save icon under HTML. But the question is still how to launch the developer tool independetaly. Like from the short cut on the desktop. Does it have a exe file like IEdeveloptools.exe.

It's like I have my learning html files on my desktop or in a folder and than I launch the IE Developer Tool directly and click on file>open and browse for the file. Than I can see all the code in the left window and how will the page look once I make the changes to it on the right window. Some think like the tryit at the http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_intro

Also the save icon suggests to save the file as .txt
Maybe i can change it to .html

Regards

Answer 1

Developer tools are part of IE, so you can't use them without first launching IE.  Visual Studio (which you can get Express versions of for free) is a great tool for this as well.

Answer 2

Get Notepad++, or HippoEdit, or Textpad, or any other text editor.  There is hardly anything to learn, and All of them will be 1,000 times better than notepad or the IE Developer Toolbar "editor"'.

Trust me, once you've used a half decent text editor like one of the above you will wonder why you thought of using the IE "editor".

And by the way, if you think the IE dev tools are good - load up Firebug in Firefox - it puts any other developer tools in the dark.

Answer 3

Thanks unique_username. Downloaded Norepad++ and leaned all of it in under an hour. The simplest one I came accross. Works wonders. While learning HTML I was advised not to use and depend on these tools if I am serious of hard coding HTML. Others tools like dream weaver are although good but not for a beginner. They try ot "help" you. Notepad++ isexactly I wanted.

Thanks again

JJ

Answer 4

Actually, I think Chrome's developer tools in their 3.x client have raised the bar on Firebug.