# Choose Your Weapon

In Harry Potter, Garrick Ollivander stated that "the wand chooses the wizard". The same is true of text editors. In this challenge you're going to let a text editor choose you.

Time= 1 hour
This challenge will take about an hour to complete and as with the other challenges there are three tasks. 

## First - A Bit Of Background

Text editors come in all many different forms, but at their hearts they all do the same thing - allow you to edit files that are composed of straight forward, everyday text. HTML & CSS files are like this, their contents are simply plain text.

Your computer may already have a text editor on it. If you're using a Windows based computer then you'll likely have Notepad (Programs > Accessories > Notepad). If you're using an Apple computer then you'll have VIM already installed (Applications > Utilities > Terminal and then type in VIM and press return). Finally, if you're running Linux (bonus points if you are) then you'll certainly have one of either VI/VIM, emacs, Kate or gedit. 

Not all text editors are created equally and whilst VIM is a truly splendid text editor, it has a steep learning curve. Unless you can already use it, then we'd recommend something else for now. You can always come back to VIM later on.

If you're running windows then Notepad has the opposite problem to VIM - it's too simple. You'll be fighting with it all the way to use it to do serious webcraft work.

## Task 1 - Let The Text Editor Choose You

Depending on the operating system that you're using, you'll have different options available to you in terms of which text editor you can install.Some of these editors are not free, but we've listed them because they're robust and available for a short period in a trial mode. Trying them out won't cost you anything financially.

There are many more text editors available for each platform and we'd encourage you to search around if none of the editors on this page choose you.

If you're running Windows –

* Notepad++ 
* ConTEXT
* E Text Editor

If you're running OS X –

* TextWrangler
* TextMate
* Sublime Text

If you're running Linux, then you have many choices. Most of which are free (as in beer and speech) –

* Gedit
* Kate
* Bluefish

Spend the next hour or so trying out the various text editors available for your operating system. With each one create a file called 'helloworld.html'. Into that file you should enter the html that you wrote by hand in the previous challenge.

If one of the text editors feels more comfortable than the others, then congratulations; a text editor just chose you. You are now a fierce webcraft warrior and you now have your trusty sword.

Spend about 40 minutes on this task.

## Task 2 - View Your File In A Browser

In choosing your text editor and writing the 'helloworld.html' file, you've just created your first web page. Now you will view it in all of its glory. This is just a quick task and it should only take five minutes at most. 

Open up your web browser and from the file menu at the top choose File > Open and open the 'helloworld.html' file that you've just created. Congratulations for the second time. That's a web page that you created.

## Task 3 - Blog About Your Text Editor

Spend the remaining ten minutes of the hour putting together a blog post. You should write about which text editor you chose and why that text editor felt different from the others. If none of the text editors you've tried felt 'right' then write about that - what was it that didn't feel right?

When your blog post is published then post a link to it on the challenge discussion page and leave feedback on your peers posts. You can also start a debate on the discussion page such as TextWrangler vs TextMate, asking people to vote by leaving a comment about which one they prefer. Make sure if you are voting yourself to provide arguments about your choice.

# Possible Badges:

## Webmaking 101- Challenge Completion 

Choose your weapon Badge: 
Description: has completed challenge 3
Assessment type: self assessment
Rubric: N/A

## Peer 


Description: The Super Blogger Badge recognizes the ability to consistently write infomative, engaging and well presented blog posts while explain clearly and concisely concepts to various audiences.
Assessment type: peer assessment 
Assessment formula: acculumative
Rubric:


Description: The Helpful Feedback Badge recognizes the ability to provide helpful and interesting feedback while maintaining a respectful tone.
Assessment type: peer assessment
Assessment formula: accumulative needs a rating >3 from 1/3 of x active peers
Rubric:


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# Smartool (tabled)


* A smartool is a tool that a learner can use again and again in other challenges.For example, TextWrangler (if TextWrangler was to be unlocked as a tool after completing this challenge) is a type of smartool. Smartools can also be user created, such as the collection of visual HTML references in Challenge 4. In unlocking smartools learners connect the skills they have gained to actual tools they can use and master.

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Community Feedback
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+1 on the Super Blogger Badge

Not sure of the inteneded audience but should we maybe not reference beer if we're aiming this at children?

People unfamiliar with open source may not understand the distinction between "free as in beer" vs. "free as in speech"--it might be useful to link to a wikipedia article or somesuch that explains it, or just remove the reference.

As the Web becomes more centric to people's computing experiences, less and less people understand what a filesystem is, which appears to be a prerequisite to this tutorial. You might want to make that prerequisite explicit.

Would it be useful to mention web/cloud-based editors like cloud9 here?