It is possible, and even very easy, using Notepad++ software as an XML editor, to indent an HTML file, using the Notepad++ XML plugin called XML Tools, directly available in the Plugin Manager, which is built in Notepad++ – a great XML viewer by the way.
How to get beautiful XML
If you haven’t done it yet, start to install Notepad++ before proceeding.
Starting with some raw HTML, XHTML, or any open XML file, without any indentation – meaning the HTML tags are not visually separated from each other.
Unformatted XML file
Open the Plugin Manager from Plugins menu.
Show plugin manager in Notepad++ plugins option menu
There, scroll down to find the XML Tools, which should be available there by default. If it is not, you can always download Notepad plus plus from below repository, and see our other article to install plugin.
In case you have not updated your Plugin Manager for a while, you might get a message telling you to update it before installing any new plugin, which is strongly advised.
An update is available to plugin manager. It is strongly advised that the plugin manager is updated before any other plugin is installed or updated. Would you like to update the plugin manager now ?
Plugin manager update message in notepad plus plus
How to format XML file in Notepad++
Then, the installation will happen automatically, simply relax while it is progressing. Not counting the download time, it should take no more than 5 minutes to complete.
Notepad++ plugin installation in progress for XML beautifier
Before the end of the installation, Notepad plus plus will ask to restart alone. No worries, just like any update in Notepad++, no work will be lost, even if not saved. However, it is of course safer to save all open work before doing this operation :
Some installation steps still need to be completed. Notepad++ needs to be restarted in order to complete these steps. If you restart later, you will be prompted again. Would you like to restart now ?
Restart message in plugin manager
Once Notepad++ has restarted, the XML Tools plugin is available in the Plugins menu, with all its useful options for XML notepad.
XML tools available in plugin menu
What is the difference between HTML and XML
The data indent with the XML parser – or HTML data indent, as HTML is a specific XML doctype among others, using a specific XML schema – select the Pretty print (XML only – with line breaks) in the XML Tools plugin, this will indent the whole data.
Pretty print (XML only – with line breaks) option in plugin manager
HTML to XML basically doesn’t mean anything, as HTML is already written in XML language. XML and HTML are basically similar.
And that’s it, the HTML data should now appear properly indented, with visually easy to see separation between the different elements, would it be XML or HTML. It is particularly good to debug HTML, when errors like missing end of tags are reported by checks like the W3C validator, which can be used as an XML validator for HTML.
XML pretty print result in Notepad++
Notepad++ works that way as a very efficient XML beautifier, making code easy to read, troubleshot and share, probably the best notepad for HTML.
Good luck building your XML document and making great XML code, it should now be much easier with this XML reader ! Also works great for XML pretty print, get an XML file example and see for yourself how to XML structure is properly displayed. XML document structure is very important to respect the XML standard, and benefit from all features of XML.
