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Markdown Here – Write email in Markdown
- dfox 9y agoI've found out that even business types can understand text/plain emails with markdown-style formatting, so what exactly is the usecase for this?
- matthberg 9y agoWhile \this\ is understandable, it is a lot less professional than italic text. It's all about presentation, and this is a shortcut to a better presentation with the same amount of effort.
- dfox 9y agoThat probably depends on whether you want to convey meaning by formatting of free flowing text. Professional way to do that is to highlight (highlight, not make bold, italics or whatever) the parts of your email that constitute the tl;dr part, even more professional is to simply write your email such that it's main point is repeated in first and/or last paragraph.
- jwilk 9y agoAFAIK there's no way to escape asterisks on HN. Backslashes certainly don't work. :(
- bphogan 9y agoBecause you can use this plugin for more than just emails. I've used this in a lot of backend systems that support rich-text interfaces but don[t support markdown.
- fsargent 9y agoIs it really easier to use markdown than bolding things using a keyboard shortcut? And tables are downright awful in markdown (or anything barring a full spreadsheet editor). When would you want to do this by hand?
- JoshTriplett 9y ago> Is it really easier to use markdown than bolding things using a keyboard shortcut? Yes, it absolutely is easier to type a few asterisks in running text rather than selecting text, hitting a keyboard shortcut or clicking a button, and then going back to typing more text.
- colanderman 9y agoMost rich text editors allow bolding running text. "Ctrl+B" vs. "shift-8" are equal. (Most rich text editors are poorly implemented and suffer from hidden state, but that's a separate problem.)
- jhasse 9y agoI use Ctrl+B in my browser to open the bookmarks side-panel though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gt_ 9y agoIn my opinion, it is about the same, maybe easier to not use markdown. If we count keystrokes, it’s less. If already typed, it’s less keystrokes to select with Shift+Ctrl then press Ctrl+B. If it’s not typed, it’s less keystrokes to Ctrl+B at he start and end. For italics, the keystrokes are about the same with and without markdown.
- JoshTriplett 9y agoPerfectly reasonable to have both available: type markdown along the way, map keyboard shortcuts to insert the appropriate formatting characters whether used statefully or with text selected.
- johnchristopher 9y ago
- matthberg 9y agoThis looks like a fun TodoMVC equivalent for testing addons, I think I might try to roll my own!
- ryanpcmcquen 9y agoSuch an amazing extension. It makes writing email fun again.
- isaacaggrey 9y agoWorth noting: Requires "Access [to] your data for all websites" On the add-on site, it fortunately does note why: > Privacy: Markdown Here accesses and modifies web content when you activate it. It can, in theory, access other web content, but does not. It also makes no Internet requests whatsoever. Your data is modified when and where you choose, and does not leave your browser. Is this a limitation of WebExtension APIs that necessitate this? Perhaps there is an opportunity for more granular WebExtension APIs.
- duskwuff 9y agoThis is essentially a limitation of the browser environment itself, not of WebExtensions. Allowing an extension to inject code into a web page gives that extension the ability to do anything that the page could do on its own, including exfiltrating data. I don't see any easy way to prevent this without severely limiting what the extension can do.
- jhasse 9y agoIt could at least be limited to gmail.com or the browser could ask for each domain.
- abricot 9y agoYou want a confirmation box for every website you access?
- jhasse 9y agoThe box should only appear when I try to toggle Markdown for the first time (which I would only do for web mail). If I understand it correctly, as it is now the extension has access to everything on every website I visit.
- ramses0 9y agoYou could maaaaybe convince me to say something like: "all content stored in [textarea] blocks" or "input type=password" CSS-type scoping, but fundamentally, it wants to rewrite _your_ content on a page, but that requires it is allowed to view and modify _all_ content of the page.
- myst 9y agoWhat's the point? My plain-text emails are already awesome.
- jhasse 9y agoSyntax highlighting for code blocks
- myst 9y agoYou may not like it, but still. If you can’t understand the code w/o syntax highlighting, you are using a wrong language.
- jhasse 9y agoI can still understand it without. It's just nicer with :)
- alkonaut 9y agoI think code is always understandable without highlighting. It's just harder. It's like text is almost always understandable without proper casing but it's harder to read. The first alternative to highlighted syntax is an IMAGE with the same code, with highlighting.
- alkonaut 9y agoImages. Formatted text. Syntax highlights in source code snippets. Html is overkill for these things, but still better at them than plaintext. Markdown strikes a good balance.
- myst 9y agoImages in emails? Are you serious?
- BrandoElFollito 9y agoThe more I read this thread, the more I think I live in a different universe. Yes, images, bold, links, colors and font sizes is what I see in all the emails I get (and send). I sometimes get the odd plaintext email and wonder why the sender was punished. I started using email in 1991. The mail today (with all the civilized elements) is infinitely better.
- ductionist 9y agoI've been using this for a few years now, mainly with FastMail and Gmail. I can't live without it, especially for sending emails with documentation, technical instructions, usernames, etc. to customers.
- madmax108 9y agoI absolutely love this extension and it's been a stable part of my workflow for the last 2 years or so. For people who are asking what the use case for this is have clearly never tried sending chunks of code over email (especially a auto-word-wrapping HTML client like Gmail). Markdown Here allows me to create beautifully formatted code blocks which are readily shared with the rest of the team and beyond (Even non-Engg love reading well formatted blocks of markdown). My workflow for a lot of mails sent out to other teams involves the following template: ---- Hey there! I ran into this error while running XYZ service. The error seems to be with a background sync script that is failing to update data. The call and params along with the response is shown below: ``` insert block of code here ``` Please let me know how to resolve this. We can get over a quick Hangouts call if necessary. ---- Select and "toggle markdown" using the extension. Send! YMMV, but this extension has been a gamechanger for me! Thanks for an awesome extension! :)
- michaelmior 9y agoI was one of those people wondering why I would use this and I have sent code via Gmail without problems. Personally I generally prefer plain text email. But I could imagine trying this out. Nice to see some positive endorsements.
- zmix 9y agoIf I am not mistaken, this is plaintext email. Traditionally, email had bold, /italics/ and _underline_. Markdown just extends on this. The danger is, however, that people continue to create their own Markdown extensions and we end up with emails, that are full with those "control-codes", which makes them ugly for anyone, not having a transformer in their email-client (aka: those, who read the plaintext)
- daveFNbuck 9y agoYou're mistaken. This converts the markdown HTML and sends an HTML e-mail. There wouldn't be much point if the receiver required a plugin they're unlikely to have. http://markdown-here.com/features.html http://markdown-here.com/features.html
- 4lch3m1st 9y agoDoes this support ProtonMail? I'm interested, but I'm also a bit paranoid with my mail privacy.
- adam-p 9y agoAt last report it works: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Compatibility#protonmail https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Compatibility#p...
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoMaybe the answer is to return to sending plaintext emails? HTML emails are an abomanation. Rather than extend them, just ditch them.
- katastic 9y agoOr you know, a standard that actually supports useful things like links.
- michaelmior 9y ago"Standard" is arguable when it comes to email. Yes messages can use HTML, but it's hard to get HTML email to look consistent across different clients.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoYour mail client can render links in plaintext emails. It probably already does. Bonus: no hiding evil URLs behind phishing <a> tags!
- katastic 9y agoYou guys are seriously downvoting HTML? Have you ever worked in a business environent? Have you have used Outlook (the most popular e-mail client in the world)? How do you support attachments in text? Do you assume every "link" is a link? Do you modify your own system for adding attachments and referencing them in the body? Oh wait. Now we're re-inventing the exact same thing again that HN users apparently consider evil.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago>Have you have used Outlook (the most popular e-mail client in the world)? Popular != good. Outlook is awful. >How do you support attachments in text? You don't. This is a benefit. >Do you assume every "link" is a link? Sure? >Do you modify your own system for adding attachments and referencing them in the body? No, you don't do this at all. Plain fucking text.
- zenojevski 9y agoI can't praise MailMate[1] enough here: A lean, no-fuss mac email client with first-party support for Markdown (with syntax highlighting!), and plenty of other goodies. Cherry on top, its developer is very active, and keeps a regularly-updated blog[2], talking about email server quirks and many other interesting technical bits. Note that I'm not in any way affiliated with the software – just a very happy customer. [1]: https://freron.com https://freron.com [2]: https://blog.freron.com https://blog.freron.com
- lyonlim 9y agoThanks for sharing! I wanted to get more information, but couldn't find it on the website (mobile, without downloading), until I found this series of screencasts. https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?list=PLC4ZkBr87CO0jmrQvGQ77t44tCT-xklqU¶ms=OAFIAVgB&v=xJFt952wQGA https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?list=PLC4ZkBr87CO0jmrQvGQ77t44... Looks very interesting for power users. Going to check this out!
- nvahalik 9y agoSecond MailMate. I wish I could swap out the parser for Kramdown... but it is leaps beyond Mail.app in utility!
- cheez 9y agoDoesn't seem to work with fastmail
- amadeusw 9y agoI'd like to use it with fastmail in firefox
- adam-p 9y agoI just quickly tested and it still seems to work. Make sure you have rich editing enabled[1]. If it still doesn't work, create an issue with more info. [1]: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Compatibility#fastmail https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Compatibility#f...
- cheez 9y agoIt seems I needed to reload the page. Works great now, thanks.
- ernestipark 9y agoThis is pretty cool. If the main interface here is to allow you to right click and transform the text though, does this require permissions to read and change all data on all your pages? Can the right click menu not only look at just the highlighted portion? Permissions feel excessive, but not sure if this is the only way based on how Chrome enables it.
- kibwen 9y agoFor those wondering which of the thousand bespoke dialects of Markdown this speaks, this project uses marked.js: https://github.com/chjj/marked https://github.com/chjj/marked
- laurent123456 9y agomarked.js has a GFM option, which is what Markdown Here appears to be using: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/blob/dc1454ecb26a95120a8662461c9629911dbc0638/src/common/markdown-render.js#L77 https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/blob/dc1454ecb26a951... I guess these days most projects use GitHub markdown since it's the most common and with the best documentation.
- kibwen 9y agoIt's not quite so simple. Markdown's problem is that it's always been pretty ill-specified. The original GFM was merely an extension to "Markdown", with its myriad of implementations all with differing behaviors. Even the marked.js README says that it merely "more or less passes the official markdown test suite"; which tests doesn't it pass? And what official Markdown test suite is this referring to ("official" would imply that it's from John Gruber himself, but the first Google result for "official markdown test suite" doesn't have Gruber's name on it)? Of course nowadays we have CommonMark, but despite ongoing activity CM has yet to have a 1.0 release, meaning that even if one intended to adhere to CM, ongoing maintenance would be required to ensure compatibility. Given that it looks as if marked.js last had a release in mid-2015, that would lead one to assume that it's not trying to follow CM. Furthermore, it was in March of this year that GFM was officially redefined to be an extension of CommonMark, not of Markdown: https://github.github.com/gfm/ https://github.github.com/gfm/ , so it's unclear which version of GFM marked.js is emulating. Lest anyone think I'm taking this too seriously though, the project here in the OP almost certainly doesn't need to care about compatibility. The markup produced is completely transient, so the worst that would happen upon hitting an unintended edge case would just be some temporary cursing on the part of the user. Where it actually matters is when you're storing the markup long-term and expect to ever want to upgrade your Markdown parser without breaking everything; for an example of the difficulty here, see how Rust has been attempting to gracefully upgrade the parser in rustdoc for almost a year now: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/what-to-do-about-pulldown-and-commonmark/5115 https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/what-to-do-about-pulldown-... , https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/44229 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/44229
- gkya 9y agoAs if HTML email was not an idiotic thing already, you build a tool to create HTML emails from a text format that was based on the usual formatting of plain text emails (and also is less portable than assembly).
- carlmr 9y agoWould be great if you had this for Outlook. My work emails are where I would need this the most.
- adam-p 9y agohttps://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/67 https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/67 I probably won't do it, though. I'm pretty sure I'd have to reimplement the entire thing in .NET.
- megaman22 9y agoIf I could get something that would make Outlook just copy and paste text in a consistent way, I'd pay money for it. There are supposed to be settings for that, but I'm apparently not smart enough to figure out how they work (or if they work).
- adam-p 9y agoI'm the author of Markdown Here. And surprised to open HN and see it on the first page! I can answer any questions (although it's really a straightforward tool -- it does what it says on the box).
- hayd 9y agoIs there a way to use just the markdown -> html so that it can be used for automated sending e.g. via mandrill/sparkpost? It looks pretty!
- masukomi 9y agothat... just... that doesn't make sense. why would you use a plugin that converts markdown to html in browser windows to do automated sending. There have been command line tools to convert markdown to html since the beginning (literally, first implementation by gruber). Pandoc is probably the go-to one these days but yeah, that's just.... not the right tool for the job.
- adam-p 9y agoThere's an issue asking for this: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/43 https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/43 It's not super high priority, but someday...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sturmen 9y agoHi Adam! I installed Markdown Here from the Chrome Web Store, and I noticed it installed 2.12.0. However, it looks like you released 2.13.1 on GitHub. Should I be installing from GitHub?
- adam-p 9y ago2.13.1 and .2 are Mozilla-specific releases, to deal with the change from XUL to WebExtensions in Firefox, while still supporting Thunderbird (and Postbox) and old Firefox (and Palemoon). I'll cut a release soon-ish to fix a couple of bugs: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/blob/master/src/common/CHANGES.md https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/blob/master/src/comm...
- alpb 9y agoVery neat idea and execution, but I doubt its usefulness. Let me explain what my thinking would be if I was the developer: Whatever email client you're using likely has easier/better support for bold/italics or other forms of text styling very easily, with shortcut keys. It probably also supports numbered/bullet lists automatically by converting lines that start with 1., 2., ... or */- characters, too. If you think about it, there's not a lot more features of Markdown remaining. The email client also likely allows easier ways to insert pictures and create links, too. This leaves us with: - Tables: I suspect anyone actually writes tables in markdown, also the mail editors probably support this better. - Math equations: I suspect anyone actually uses this except academics. - Code blocks with syntax highlighting: this seems to be the only useful feature of the extension. I also realized the extension does not work on Google Docs, where I was mainly hoping to use the code formatting feature.
- fny 9y ago> I doubt its usefulness Tell that to the 70k people who use it in Chrome alone.[0] While for you it's not that useful, I've used it for years now. I'd say Adam has built the perfect product for the target market. [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-here/elifhakcjgalahccnjkneoccemfahfoa https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-here/elif...
- xs 9y agoI blog in markdown, I reddit in markdown, I trello in markdown, I github in markdown. I write books in markdown. It's become my writing method of choice. This is for me. I'm so glad reddit doesn't have that ugly, clunky, icon bar to let me bold or hyperlink. I'm so glad trello doesn't either.
- hota_mazi 9y agoGood luck finding support for code highlighting with this approach. Markdown Here is unbeatable for this.
- fny 9y agoCheers to Adam. I've been using the for years--since time the extension was called "Markdown Anywhere" and had a purple butterfly as the logo and mascot! My use cases: - Sending code, diffs, and equations in emails - Copy/paste from other markdown docs - Dodging crappy WYSIWGs on some sites
- fovc 9y agoIf anyone has set something like this up with emacs, would love to hear about it. I'm currently using org-mime, but would prefer to use markdown Edit: 30 seconds of searching led me to here: http://tess.oconnor.cx/2008/01/html-email-composition-in-emacs http://tess.oconnor.cx/2008/01/html-email-composition-in-ema...
- aendruk 9y agoAre there any mail clients that can send with Content-Type: text/markdown?
- tbe 9y agoThat would be nice if it was standard for clients to display text/markdown rendered as styled text. This would require an actual standard for the markdown syntax though. Without the rendering, markdown is just text/plain. Are there any mail clients that will send both the markdown source and the rendered HTML as a multi-part message?
- jwilk 9y agoYou can specify Markdown variant in Content-Type. Source: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7763 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7763 https://www.iana.org/assignments/markdown-variants/markdown-variants.xhtml https://www.iana.org/assignments/markdown-variants/markdown-...
- tbe 9y agoOk, good to know, thanks. The point still stands that the receiver's client probably doesn't bother styling the message. I mean even if GMail, say, was persuaded to do it, Outlook for instance wouldn't.
- hoechst 9y agoBeen using Airmail for macOS for a few years now. Pretty happy with it, does formating with Markdown as well.
- BerislavLopac 9y agoI find this nicely ironic, as Markdown was invented as a way to convert the de-facto standard for writing textual messages (like email and usenet) with semantic information. Personally, I have been writing my emails in Markdown for years, as I still use a fixed-width font even in Gmail (which doesn't have a text-only option, at least not that I know of). EDIT: I just checked, and Gmail does have a plain-text option. However, for double irony, when you select it the font used for the message is not fixed-width, which pretty much beats the purpose. :-/
- burntsushi 9y agoYeah I hear ya. I used to have a browser extension that let me have a fixed width font and use plain text mode in Gmail, but I think that stopped working a couple years ago. These days, if I am writing a long email, I usually just type it in vim first.
- dalanmiller 9y ago> It can: > * Read and change all your data on the websites you visit https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/blob/master/src/manifest.json#L19 https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/blob/master/src/mani... Shouldn't this just be email serving domains? e.g. `https://mail.google.com` https://mail.google.com` et al? Also it'd be great if the Chrome webstore could offer some verification, so that as long as I trust Github and Google, I can confirm that the code I see at Github is the extension I'm installing.
- arkadiyt 9y agoChrome extensions are stored unpacked on your filesystem, it's easy to read what code is being used. On OSX they're in: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions
- chittti 9y agoHere's a script which makes it easier. https://gist.github.com/chittti/6f59b53053c44954414ff15d58265606 https://gist.github.com/chittti/6f59b53053c44954414ff15d5826...
- adam-p 9y ago> Shouldn't this just be email serving domains? That was my initial idea, but then I realized that it can work in more places than I ever would have guessed. And I/we wouldn't have discovered them if it were only whitelist-enabled. You can see dozens of the sites here, and there are surely many more: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Compatibility https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Compatibility > Also it'd be great if the Chrome webstore could offer some verification I agree, in principle. Unfortunately, it wouldn't match. At some point Mozilla decided to start rejecting updates because there was unreachable -- Chrome-only -- code in the extension. So I had to start using a preprocessor during builds to strip out platform-specific stuff. (AMO's reviews have driven me nuts over the years.) The build is reproducible, though. I also provide instructions for running the extension directly from source. Chrome makes it easy (Firefox doesn't). https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here#manualdevelopment https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here#manualdevelopment (I just realized that I need to update the Firefox instructions/link for WebExtensions. Which is even more painful than XUL was to use from source.)
- alexozer 9y agoDoesn't seem to work with Google Inbox. Agh.
- selrond 9y agoIt does not. Here's an Github issue I've created almost 2 years ago... https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/327#issuecomment-342757932 https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/327#issuecomm...
- bad_user 9y agoI love Markdown Here and if the author is reading this — thanks a lot for your work. I've had a great time using it for years. I've did had problems with it when using it with FastMail and I hope it gets fixed at some point. Naturally it's optimized for Gmail first. Btw folks, webmail isn't the only option. I've been using MailMate (https://freron.com/ https://freron.com/), it has baked-in Markdown support, keyboard shortcuts, plays well with Gmail too and it's awesome. For messages it's much better to use a client like MailMate instead of a browser plugin like Markdown Here, because it will properly format and send multi-part mime messages — your message will be displayed well in both text and HTML ;-) PS: I wish an open-source alternative would be as awesome as MailMate, but alas. On the other hand MailMate is very standards oriented and I don't mind supporting its author with money.
- abricot 9y agoYou forgot the small print: MailMate is Mac only.
- bad_user 9y agoYes, sorry, but it's really good, I wish Thunderbird were like that.
- adam-p 9y agoCreate an issue with what's going wrong with FastMail. https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/new https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/new My own brief testing -- and another user's report -- suggests that it's working. Make sure you have rich editing enabled.
- ishi 9y agoThis is fantastic! I tried it in Thunderbird and it works great. Just keep in mind that math formulas are sent to be rendered via Google Charts - so don't use this to generate your super-secret cold fusion equations... (as if sending them by mail would be a great idea to begin with).
- erikb 9y agoI can do that very simply. Just start writing. But please, don't parse that and send html emails.
- timvdalen 9y agoI've been using this extension for a while now and I'm really loving it. Whenever I need to send an email that includes a code sample, Markdown Here makes it so much better than just slapping a monospaced font on plaintext code.
- mproud 9y ago95% of the email I send is unstyled. Occasionally I’ll throw in bold text. Does this really solve a problem for the everyday man or woman?
- krick 9y agoIt only makes sense if an email is "unstyled". Thunderbird manages to fuck up my email layout all the time if I need to add a few lines of preformated text, occasional bullet list or some highlighting. If I try to write plaintext-only emails it fucks up RE: and FWD: emails for most normal people. If I use "rich" text emails with standard settings email client will do everything to fuck them up and while it will look ok on my screen it will end up with some smart-ass who uses plaintext-only client whining about me writing shitty formated emails. So, I don't know if using this plugin will feel helpful (I doubt it, since second most used formatting option for me is text-highlighting with color — indispensable when marking up some airline fare construction quote or something else cryptic enough, — which markdown doesn't really support), but the problem it tries to solve definitely exists.
- daptaq 9y agoSo markdown was inspired by the was emails were formated in plain texts, which was easily read by humans, just so that eventually through permutations, variations and abominations people start converting this (onnce) easily readable syntax into HTML emails? great.
- TuringTest 9y agoThat's because browsers don't support native Markdown formatting.
- daptaq 9y agoMarkdown is it's own formatting environment! All it needs is a constant-width font, a concept not particularly new to the world of computers. If there were no downsides to this, and email was build from the first day on to work with HTML, then this would all be fine, but sadly (or not so sadly) this isn't the case.
- j7ake 9y agoDoes this work through the Apple mail app ?
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 9y agoThis is great. I'm often asked to provide data, and have made some helper methods to return the data in markdown. I then typically have to find a converter before pasting the results into the email body, so having an extension to make this easier is great :D
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cujanovic 9y agoThis is vulnerable to XSS, payload: [Click Me](javascript:this;alert(document.domain))
- stevekemp 9y agoOr even the more naive "<script>alert(3)</script>" - which was the second thing I tried.