[SIZE=“4”]Sorry about asking for help so soon…I feel quite stupid!
Hubby bought me the “Build your own website the right way” book for Christmas and I only started on it today and have already come up with a problem. On saving my first file, the book tells me to save in UTF-8 code but it isn’t there. My question is…if I save it as “All files” will that be ok???[/SIZE]
yes
I agree it should be fine.
Although, if you are using special characters not in the standard ASCII range or a foreign language with special accented characters or letters it can cause some display/rendering issues if you type them in directly and it isn’t UTF-8. Then you may have to use character entity reference or numeric character references i.e. © or © for or the © copyright symbol.
Are you using Notepad to write your (x)html?
If so and you are using Windows XP newer. For saving you go to something like: File: > Save As… It should come up it a ‘Save As’ Dialog box and on the bottom drop-down it should say Encoding: Where you can select ‘UTF-8’ although you said you didn’t have that option I am just double-checking you didn’t overlook it. 
Thank you for your reply.
I am using Windows Vista and HTML-Kit. I also tried saving it in Notepad but the drop down list does not have give any options to Encoding or UTF-8 in either programme. I am saving it “All files” and keeping my fingers crossed that it works. If I have problems I might have to come back for help.
No worries. The free version of HTML-Kit doesn’t have a direct save as UTF-8 option but like I said generally it’s not a huge issue, if you are just using English, etc.
As for Vista notepad I don’t know how it saves as I don’t have a copy at hand but it should have the option somewhere even if it is automatic.
Basically they both will be 100% fine for the HTML part. But like I mentioned some special character text may render strangely.[FONT="]
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Thanks ever so much for your help. I have now found it in Notepad and even though I prefer HTML-Kit I can at least copy and paste into Notepad and save it properly as and when it is completed. Thank you very much again:)
Generally when using HTML-Kit, I know when (or if) it needs to be saved in UTF-8 or how to avoid things so it doesn’t become much of an issue for me.
Though if you feel safer (and probably will be) while learning with it being in UTF-8 then yes notepad is good. I am glad you have found the option for saving in; UTF-8 encoding.
Thankee
You can get a free editor like NotePad++ which have features like syntax highlighting. When saving as UTF-8, select the option in which ever program you use “Without BOM” as it can cause problems with some scripts with headers.
This is the single greatest (free) utility I have used in pursuing Web page design. You really need to treat yourself to it: it highlights in various ways just about every piece of HTML code you can write, showing me at a glance my mistakes.
I hope it’s helpful to you.