Learn something new every day and I just learned this.

I was tired of uploading my .shtml files to see how they looked actually on my webspace only to find an error, fix it and then have to upload it again to check.

With a little asking around I discovered several ways around this that would help me to view these files on my computer and save me the trouble(not to mention bandwidth use) of uploading the same file several times to check it for errors etc.

First and easiest is to right click your .shtml file and choose to open it with InternetExplorer. You won't see the header and footer this way if you are using one but you will see the meat of the page which is what I was after.

This is working great and now all .shtml files on my computer are set to open with IE. I can do a view source if I need to edit just like I have always done with .html pages.

Second thing you could do is barely more difficult. Go to this url:
http://www.toolsforselling.com/v1/2/shtmview.htm

And once there download the SHTML Viewer. It is a small download at just a wee bit over 220k or so.

Install and run it. Then you can either enter the direct path to your file or browse for it.

With this tool you can view the entire page come together. Header, footer and main body are all there.

The last resort is more complicated and so I am not going to really get into much. You can download Apache onto your system and essentially enable your PC with it.

There are also similar things to doing that which can be found here: http://www.firepages.com.au/

Go to downloads and grab a PHPDev bundle pack. They are big though and the recommended one is around 12mb in size.

Well those are the options that were graciously presented to me today. I hope someone down the road finds this information useful.

Drache

Great tips Drache! I'd been looking for a way to view the whole page on a computer! Really annoyed me that I couldn't do it when I was developing a site a while back... pages looked OK, but when the SSI was included some of them went totally wrong...

Originally posted by david
Great tips Drache! I'd been looking for a way to view the whole page on a computer! Really annoyed me that I couldn't do it when I was developing a site a while back... pages looked OK, but when the SSI was included some of them went totally wrong...

Yay someone found it helpful right away!!

Sounds like you should get the SHTML viewer. That will put all your includes in there as well.

It worked for me with the header and footer which are SSI includes.

btw, did I also mention the SHTML viewer is free?

Another server you might want to install (that requires no download and is easier to install and configure than Apache) is Microsoft's Internet Information Server (aka IIS). You can find PWS (a personal version of IIS 4) on your Win 98se CD rom (installable by "adding a windows component")... XP Pro comes with a similar (but better featured) cut-down version of IIS 5.1 that is installed in a similar way.

Once installed, just configure your server to look in your web folder (or drop your files in c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\) and you should see your SHTML files the way you intended. An added benefit of using IIS is that you have support for ASP built in if ever you want to have a go at developing ASP applications... all without ever needing to be connected to the internet!

Drachewyn: thanks for the SHTML Viewer link. I'd been planning to write something like that myself when I had the time, but this should do nicely.

Tiggy: I've got a few SSI sites going (not all "mine") and I've been using port numbers so that each site has its own root instead of being a subdirectory of the "main root". (I.e. Instead of http://localhost/mysite and http://localhost/yoursite I'm using http://localhost:9100 and http://localhost:9101, kind of like virtual hosting.) Can you do the same thing with IIS and if so is it easy enough to figure out how to do that?

OtterBob, it depends on your version of IIS - most personal versions support only 1 website (with PWS limiting you to 10 simulatenous sessions). I tend to keep my sites in seperate directories changing them to the site I'm currently working on - as I am the only one who will see the sites locally anyway...

Fuller versions of the software will support multiple sites, but I'm not sure if they will be differentated through port number or if you can configure them to respond to different local host "names" (eg, I have sites locally at "lappy", my laptop running PWS and "lucy" my desktop running IIS, both sites are accessible from any computer on our home network).

Thanks for the reply. Looks like it's time for me to go play with IIS.