Why does the browser show my plain HTML source?

If Microsoft Internet Explorer displays your document normally, but other browsers display your plain HTML source, then most likely your web server is sending the document with the MIME type "text/plain". Your web server needs to be configured to send that filename with the MIME type "text/html". Often, using the filename extension ".html" or ".htm" is all that is necessary. If you are seeing this behavior while viewing your HTML documents on your local Windows filesystem, then your text editor may have added a ".txt" filename extension automatically. You should rename filename.html.txt to filename.html so that Windows will treat the file as an HTML document.