Changing the View Source Editor for IE
Everytime you want to view the source code for a HTML page you get it in Notepad. And Notepad isn’t exactly the “nicest” text editor to be viewing HTML source code in.
Do you want coloured syntax highlighting?
What is your favourite text editor?
Mine is TextPad.
So, let’s go about changing our “View Source Editor” for Internet Explorer, it’s not hard to do, just have to do a few things inside the registry.
Please, only do the following if you know what you are doing, and it’s a good idea to do a backup of the registry before proceeding.
By doing any of the following “tweaks” you take full responsibility of your own action.
1) Ok, let’s start off with going into your Registry editor.
Click on the start button, and select Run.
In the Run dialog type in “regedit” without the quotes of course. 
2) You will now be presented with your Registry editor, and you’ll see 5 folders.
They should be, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT [HKCR], HKEY_CURRENT_USER [HKCU], HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE [HKLM], HKEY_USERS [HKU], HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG [HKCC].
I won’t go along and explain them all, but the one we are concerned with for this “tweak” is the HKLM.
i) Ok, now we are going to open up HKLM and browse to the SOFTWARE folder and open that up.
ii) You will now see under the SOFTWARE folder many diffrent company names (these are names of companies who develop software that is installed on your system).
iii) Navigate your way to the folder called Microsoft, and proceed to open up the folder under Microsoft called “Internet Explorer” (without quotes of course!)
iv) Right-clicking on the Internet Explorer folder, you will see a context menu.
v) Select New and then Select Key.
vi) There will now be a visual indicator for you to add a new Name for the Key (folder). Type in View Source Editor
vii) Now, let’s create another Key underneath the one that we just created. This can be done by repeating the process we just went through. Right-Click on View Source Editor, and New -> Key.
viii) Call this new Key Editor Name.
ix) Okay, click on Editor Name and you will see in the right hand pane something that says: (Default) REG_SZ
x) Now double click on the (Default) and a dialog box will prompt you for a Value data:
xi) For the Value data, type in the location for your favourite text editor. For me, that would be c:textpadtextpad.exe
3) You are now done, close all your internet explorer browser windows, and open up a new internet explorer browser window. Go load up any website (best to use your own one) and then do a View Source.
Note: I have only done this on my Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers, so be careful what you do if you are running something diffrent and the instructions don’t match what you have in your own registry.
Hope this post ends up someone out there! I’ve had my IE setup this way for quite sometime, and find it most useful because Notepad is a bit hard to read (once you’ve gotten used to some of the other text-editors out there). But it is a matter of personal choice though, which one you end up using
September 20th, 2004 at 12:46 am
[...] ; Altering the registry to manage add-ons in IE under SP2 As I mentioned the last time I posted a tip that may damage the system registry [...]
August 29th, 2004 at 02:38 am
Yes..i used TextPad from the start am writing program and as well as compiling code..you see..it’s much more easier compared with notepad..
August 29th, 2004 at 09:14 am
TextPad? Bleh
*grin* For the last 5 years, nothing has steered me straighter than UltraEdit.
Hey, just a thought, it’s good to do a post like this one talking about how to do a registry mod (and describing it in easy steps), and you have a the usual disclaimer of ‘don’t do it if you don’t know what you’re doing’ etc etc…you should write an entry on _how_ to back up your registry, for those people who got scared off by the disclaimer
August 29th, 2004 at 09:42 am
Geoff, yeah, I could do that as a follow-up blog post. And perhaps a few other neat registry “hacks” that I’ve been using on my PC to make life easier
November 5th, 2004 at 12:54 am
Thanks for the tweak. One thing I’ve noticed is that the temp htm file does not have an extension so my editor (EditPlus) loads without text coloring. Is this something I need to change in EditPlus, or is there a way around this? Thanks.
April 1st, 2005 at 06:42 pm
Hi, thanks for yr code/help for changing the default editor to view source.
with me everything gone fine Buuuuuuuuut.
….. now when i tries to open/view source, it gives error related to the path/location for that temp file as in WIN2k path is ‘c:\documents and…..’
and there is space after documents which creates problem while mapping to open (….. what i thinks !!!)
any help
Hans raj Kasana
April 8th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
Thanks for the tweak too – never actually added a reg key before
, but I also got the same problem as Bill Dunn mentions, but a few clicks will sort of hack through it; right click in the opened source document, access ‘properties’, choose ‘syntax’, check the ‘enable syntax highlighting’ box and then choose ‘html.syn’ from the drop-down list. It’s a bit less elegant than what I’m after, but it saves cut ‘n’ paste circus.
May 6th, 2005 at 04:59 am
Point 1:
Hans Raj Kasana: you are right… put quotes around your string that may have spaces in them (“C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator”);
Point2:
Just wanted to let everyone know it also works if you use Win2003 Server
February 24th, 2006 at 02:22 am
EditPlus is a very clean, lite, and nice overall editor.
And it has an internal option in preferences:
Use with IE – does the same thing – no manual registry editing needed !
March 29th, 2006 at 07:55 pm
Notepad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net does a fairly good job, as a high-end text-editor with syntax highlighting, auto-indentation etc. And it allows you to configure it as “view source” editor during installation.
Best thing, though … it’s freeware!
April 1st, 2006 at 08:03 pm
Thanks for this useful tip. I couldn’t believe there was no Windows entry into this setting other than the registry. Of course, I believe it now. Internet Options, Programs would be the obvious place to put it, but that would be too easy.
Tnanks again.
April 17th, 2006 at 04:19 pm
Thanks a lot !!!
June 7th, 2006 at 04:14 pm
Will,
We have a simple little tool that automates the process of changing the editor into a free tool available here:
[url]www.iconico.com/viewSourceEditor/[/url]
August 10th, 2006 at 07:00 pm
Didn’t work for me. I’m using Windows 64 and this doesn’t seem to do the trick. Oh well.
September 19th, 2006 at 07:49 am
thanks, an easy way for xp (not sure other platforms)
1. write a file with content :
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\View Source Editor\Editor Name]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\UltraEdit\\uedit32.exe\”"
2. save it as filename.reg
3. right click on the file
4. choose ‘merge’
done
(change the path if you use a different one)
September 19th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Good tip James (regarding the .reg file).
November 2nd, 2006 at 08:30 pm
I use EditPlus v2.10c for text editor. So editplus show source of file without syntax color. To solve this problem, i found a solution with some clicks. After you have add the reg key, when you click the “View Source” option in the the context menu on the ie, editplus will be opened with the temp file which has no any extension. Then click “Document” from toolbar and select “Change File Type…” and select “HTML” from list then click “OK” button. Now it is colored like a rainbow
ps: i used will’s tweak with ie, version 7.0.5730.11 and it works fine.