Quick Start
TypeMetal was designed to work in intuitively familiar ways, so you can get started with it easily, and quickly become proficient.
Here are a few pointers to help you start writing and editing your own HTML using TypeMetal. They call out some of the unique features that TypeMetal adds to the standard Mac app functionality you’d expect.
Top Eleven Things to Know about TypeMetal
- TypeMetal 2 works with both standalone HTML files and entire WordPress sites, helping you write with ease regardless of where you publish.
- In TypeMetal, you write and edit your content as your readers will see it: fully styled, not as cumbersome
<html>syntax. There is no separate “Preview” window. - Style Sheets determine how your HTML files look (while themes determine how your WordPress posts and pages look). Use one of TypeMetal’s built-in, HTML 5-ready style sheets, or any CSS file(s) you choose, to style your HTML files beautifully and consistently.
- HTML Formatting Settings provide full control over how your HTML markup will look. Set it, then forget it, and let TypeMetal produce elegant, consistently formatted markup that a Web professional can be proud of.
- TypeMetal’s Source Loupe lets you peek at the HTML markup that corresponds to any part of your document you mouse over. Go ahead. Take a look. You’ll like what you see.
- TypeMetal’s Snippet Sets help you define and consistently apply your own styling vocabulary. Use them to produce consistently styled, semantically rich documents that leverage the full potential of HTML and CSS to produce beautiful, meaningful results.
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Show Block Structure mode empowers you to see, grasp, and manipulate the otherwise invisible structure of your content. Your
<section>and<div>elements grow handles that you can grab to drag them around. Double-click those same handles to temporarily collapse subtrees of your document. - TypeMetal was designed to help you keep your fingers on the keyboard, so you can write with speed and agility. Master its ample keyboard shortcuts, and you’ll fly through your writing in no time. For example: the Tab and Esc keys provide handy ways to “pop out” of an HTML element you’ve just created — so you can move along quickly to typing the content that follows.
- Use TypeMetal’s Title and Properties view to edit a document’s title and inspect some of its other properties.
- HTML’s document model is tree-structured — with elements and text nested inside of other elements — not “flat”, like other document models you may have worked with. See “Positioning the Insertion Point” for how the distinction will affect the way you edit.
- TypeMetal condenses whitespace as you type. When you want more than one space between words, you can insert explicit non-breaking spaces.
Next Steps
Learn how to work with .html files, or WordPress sites.