Are Markdown's Days Numbered for Steemit❓
Wax on, wax off -- Mark up, Mark down
Here on Steemit we've seen lots of great content that attempts to enlighten users about the importance of correctly formatting their posts using the various markdown and HTML constructs (i.e. headings, lists, bold, italics, etc).
Haha, markdown⬇️ is the markup⬆️ language used by Wikipedia and @steemit, to name a few!
I'll highlight two such @steemit posts by way of example:
Viewing and copying markdown
Currently, and for as long as I can recall, I've had the ability to use my web browser to view the HTML source code for a given web page.
How about the current use of markdown for creating Steemit posts, will it soon be a thing of the past, to be replaced with something like SteemPower.org's WYSIWYG markdown editor for Steemit.com?
If not, would it be helpful if the Steemit UI gave us a way to view/copy the raw markdown for a given user's Steemit post?
Maybe this would be a good way for jumpstarting new posts and serving as a template for new users to work off of? That is, pick a Steemit post that is similar to the style you want, copy the associated markdown, and modify it from there.
Or, maybe there are some privacy, technical, and/or other issues that make this idea infeasible or moot?
my thoughts are that markdown is great to have and it's a nice way to get people into teh "front-end" of web services, so far any writer can copy and paste his posts if he wants to , so therefore provide layouts :) , that is it as good as it gets :) If anyone wants to he can share the layout :)
So far I'm still getting into the markdown and Steemit capabilities and it's fun to explore and experiment :)
Agree @3jdy. That's why I was thinking out loud about how nice it would be if you could click a Steemit UI button that copied the markdown for anyone's post and use it as a template for your post.
yeah the UI part would be great , so far we have no functionality , which is a way for people to get into html and markdown it's not that difficult, with everything served at your feet nowdays, sites where you can make sites by drag and drop and such. It's a bit of a shame people are moving away from coding smartly and into "smart" technologies, so they take out the smart they can house and say it's out there , so I think people have gotten dumber with more information and less processing, we tend to miss out on real substantial pieces like "Fez" in games for instance in favor of the endless slew of simple games not bringing in any real value or development of the mind.
I'm still trying to get formatting in order and gathering some tricks in my bag , images links and such , since markdown is used for wikipedia can we use it the same way here? :D make some great articles. So far there are many tools that are awesome and growing, radio, polls now , we are missing groups and databases , that would be very helpful.
Lists and a video player or a separate app for desktop , where steemit runs like a Nigerian sprinter :) lightningBolt fast.
anyway it's easier to want than to give :D
I have often seen posts that I would like to know what the markdown looked like for. Now that I am used to it I find it easy to use.
Full support for a copy and paste from a formatted document written in LibreOffice would be nice too. I'm not sure how much I like using online editors though - sometimes problems happen and I feel safer if I can frequently save a document to disk.
I'm fairly certain that the markdown must be saved to the Steem blockchain, since I'm able to subsequently edit my own posts and see it.
Steemit's Markdown has been a nightmare for rss feeds to other sites. It's just not friendly for formatting. If someone posts in HTML, it comes out great. If it's markdown, there are tools that can help, depending on the UI. Images can be highly problematic, partly because Steemit provides for converting hotlinks, but the address doesn't convey as either Markdown or HTML when it reaches another site.
Hopefully tools will be developed to make this more intuitive and consistent. For now, building an off-blockchain site that offers a seamless presentation is a nightmare.
so write in html ?
We can, but we can't make everyone else do it. Our goal is to be able to broadcast to other platforms. We can't even get an image and excerpt to display correctly.
Yeah much work on the front end and the back end and the chains :| wasn't this alpha when did the beta begin :D , anyway I think we need a year on here and some great ideas to make it stable and figure out what we are doing and where we are going :)
What an intriguing idea!
I love the idea of allowing newbie users (or pro bloggers in a rush) take a template in markdown or HTML and simply insert their text or pic links. That would save so much time. Come to think of it - I kind of already do that with my signature lines. I just never thought about a whole page template. It's brilliant!
Actually, were you the one with the recent post with 101 in the title? It part 2 of a series on how to blog. I was going to use it as one of the example of formatting posts correctly but I couldn't locate it.
I do have 2 blogs so far for blogging 101. The first one is on the importance of title, picture and first 100 characters and the second one is on headers and white space. Feel free to use what you need because I think it's important for everyone to practice.