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What made sense about the Ghost write screen was that it embraced Markdown. It showed what things would look like as you wrote them. I don't think the screensho

What made sense about the Ghost write screen was that it embraced Markdown. It showed what things would look like as you wrote them. I don't think the screenshot of the new WordPress dashboard addresses that.

dangrossman 14y ago
Markdown isn't for bloggers, it's for developers. The average blogger has never learned an "alternative syntax" in their lives -- a word-processor-like formatting toolbar, like WordPress has, makes much more sense.
- seanconaty 14y ago
  True, but markdown is incredibly easy to learn, especially with this side-by-side layout.
- danneu 14y ago
  I found this out last year when I offered markdown support on my forum that used traditional bbcode. I run a collaborative writing forum and, newly obsessed with markdown at the time, I figured that since users were mostly writing many paragraphs of text, they could pick up the markdown basics if a toolbar + cheatsheet helped them out. In my head, it was going to be some sort of amazing improvement and my forum community would begin chanting my name as they experienced the splendors of markdown. Classic mistake. Yeah, sure -- the writers could certainly grasp markdown #headers, how two linebreaks become a new `<p>`, and even `[]()` vs `()[]` links (with toolbar/cheatsheet help). Great! But nested elements and pretty much anything more complicated were a real monkey wrench or just plain unsupported. Writers would put great effort into their posts (just like a blogger would), changing colors, right-aligning, center-aligning, changing font sizes. -- Things that markdown just doesn't support without some extending or post-processing that would turn into something far more confounding than the intuitive bbcode you started with. Everyone just understands: [center][size="6"][color="red"]My Cat, Mittens:[/color][/size][/center] [img]http://imgur.com/mittens.jpg[/img] [size="3"]Mittens says: [i]"Meow!"[/i][/size]
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    There might be a hump to get over at first, but I think Markdown is going to be by far the best to go for in the long run. What did your cheatsheet look like?
    - danneu 14y ago
      My cheatsheet was a simple condensed table of "this | produces this" beneath the post textfield. Also, other communities that deal with a similar audience had the same problem with Markdown and moved back to BBCode. For example, these guys (http://guildwork.com/forum/threads/4e46f3d5205cb22721000765-bye-bye-markdown-hello-bbcode http://guildwork.com/forum/threads/4e46f3d5205cb22721000765-...) moved from BBCode to Markdown and then ended up moving back and writing their own BBCode parser in Python. Markdown is good when users have limited syntactical/formatting options. But BBCode makes it easier to extend features with an intuitive syntax that nobody seems to have trouble with. One example would be Markdown's dependence on character glyphs: ![my puppy](mypuppy.jpg) [click here](http://google.com) preformatted text While BBCode is easy to recall in plain English and you don't need to remember any glyphs or the order of them: [img]mypuppy.jpg[/img] [url="http://google.com"]click here[/url] [code] preformatted text [/code] Adding dice and a youtube embedder to BBCode intuitively extends the syntax set. It doesn't introduce any new symbols or anything. [dice]4d6[/dice] [youtube]http://youtube.com/v?i2h38aoj[/youtube] Finally, it's been half a decade since I used Wordpress and I think I'm way off topic here since, on second thought, I'm pretty sure Wordpress just offers a WYSIWYG editor that lets you drop into html. Doesn't even use any sort of BBCode-like syntax. :O)
      - pessimism 14y ago
        That’s a great point about the inherent ability to extend the number of tags that isn’t inherently present in Markdown. I am currently writing a forum CMS (http://pygm.us/IbkgNZ4d http://pygm.us/IbkgNZ4d), and I, too, have wondered how to expand the number of tags within a rigid nomenclature. Using a lexer that automatically converts links to tweets and YouTube videos to embedded scripts seems like an unintuitive solution, but on the other hand, people unfamiliar with the commands will automatically display the embeds in their posts. For commands that don’t convert links, I was thinking about something like ':<COMMAND>:' with an expandable list of whatever people prefer. Something Awful already use this model for their emoticons, and it could be extended to things like images in general like states for election conversation and such. I have always found the `[url]` solution to be incredibly bothersome and to some extent unintuitive, and with the advent of mobile devices, letting people write their posts in as few characters as possible is a big advantage to be taken into consideration when weighing the pros and cons.
- filmgirlcw 14y ago
  I disagree. I know I'm on the fringe but I make my living as a writer and 100% of my work is written in Markdown (MultiMarkdown, actually) that I then convert to HTML to paste into WordPress. Is it perfect for everyone, no, but for the subset of users who want to roll their own server setup and still have an easy-to-use publishing platform, it sure does fill a lot of boxes. Moreover, I can teach people Markdown 10x faster than I can teach them CMS-specific HTML rules. Moreover, WordPress's TinyMCE stuff can break quiet easily (we have to disable it for most of our writers, I'm still allowed to have it because I never use it), so having a readably syntax AND having an instant-preview seems pretty perfect.
  - voidfiles 14y ago
    You aren't alone. There is actually a version of Markdown for writing Screenplays. When writers adopt Markdown then I am not sure who Markdown is not for.
    - 46Bit 14y ago
      Markdown as I see it is for those who are trying to emphasise the text over style, which especially means writers. What it doesn't mean is random webforums where every second post has a rainbow of colours, boldings and so forth.
  - maguay 14y ago
    I'm another one who writes for a living and writes 100% in Markdown, then convert to HTML for Markdown. I just moved my own site to Kirby so I could publish with straight Markdown files. I know we're far from the only ones that do that.
pjbrunet 14y ago
Just open a new browser window, easy to do if your OS supports window tiling. A split-screen blog editor will take up just as much room. WordPress does have a "post preview" but it's not always 100% accurate. Opening the blog post in a new window is truly the only way to see what you're actually publishing.

dangrossman 14y ago

Markdown isn't for bloggers, it's for developers. The average blogger has never learned an "alternative syntax" in their lives -- a word-processor-like formatting toolbar, like WordPress has, makes much more sense.

seanconaty 14y ago
True, but markdown is incredibly easy to learn, especially with this side-by-side layout.
danneu 14y ago
I found this out last year when I offered markdown support on my forum that used traditional bbcode. I run a collaborative writing forum and, newly obsessed with markdown at the time, I figured that since users were mostly writing many paragraphs of text, they could pick up the markdown basics if a toolbar + cheatsheet helped them out. In my head, it was going to be some sort of amazing improvement and my forum community would begin chanting my name as they experienced the splendors of markdown. Classic mistake. Yeah, sure -- the writers could certainly grasp markdown #headers, how two linebreaks become a new `<p>`, and even `[]()` vs `()[]` links (with toolbar/cheatsheet help). Great! But nested elements and pretty much anything more complicated were a real monkey wrench or just plain unsupported. Writers would put great effort into their posts (just like a blogger would), changing colors, right-aligning, center-aligning, changing font sizes. -- Things that markdown just doesn't support without some extending or post-processing that would turn into something far more confounding than the intuitive bbcode you started with. Everyone just understands: [center][size="6"][color="red"]My Cat, Mittens:[/color][/size][/center] [img]http://imgur.com/mittens.jpg[/img] [size="3"]Mittens says: [i]"Meow!"[/i][/size]
- kmfrk 14y ago
  There might be a hump to get over at first, but I think Markdown is going to be by far the best to go for in the long run. What did your cheatsheet look like?
  - danneu 14y ago
    My cheatsheet was a simple condensed table of "this | produces this" beneath the post textfield. Also, other communities that deal with a similar audience had the same problem with Markdown and moved back to BBCode. For example, these guys (http://guildwork.com/forum/threads/4e46f3d5205cb22721000765-bye-bye-markdown-hello-bbcode http://guildwork.com/forum/threads/4e46f3d5205cb22721000765-...) moved from BBCode to Markdown and then ended up moving back and writing their own BBCode parser in Python. Markdown is good when users have limited syntactical/formatting options. But BBCode makes it easier to extend features with an intuitive syntax that nobody seems to have trouble with. One example would be Markdown's dependence on character glyphs: ![my puppy](mypuppy.jpg) [click here](http://google.com) preformatted text While BBCode is easy to recall in plain English and you don't need to remember any glyphs or the order of them: [img]mypuppy.jpg[/img] [url="http://google.com"]click here[/url] [code] preformatted text [/code] Adding dice and a youtube embedder to BBCode intuitively extends the syntax set. It doesn't introduce any new symbols or anything. [dice]4d6[/dice] [youtube]http://youtube.com/v?i2h38aoj[/youtube] Finally, it's been half a decade since I used Wordpress and I think I'm way off topic here since, on second thought, I'm pretty sure Wordpress just offers a WYSIWYG editor that lets you drop into html. Doesn't even use any sort of BBCode-like syntax. :O)
    - pessimism 14y ago
      That’s a great point about the inherent ability to extend the number of tags that isn’t inherently present in Markdown. I am currently writing a forum CMS (http://pygm.us/IbkgNZ4d http://pygm.us/IbkgNZ4d), and I, too, have wondered how to expand the number of tags within a rigid nomenclature. Using a lexer that automatically converts links to tweets and YouTube videos to embedded scripts seems like an unintuitive solution, but on the other hand, people unfamiliar with the commands will automatically display the embeds in their posts. For commands that don’t convert links, I was thinking about something like ':<COMMAND>:' with an expandable list of whatever people prefer. Something Awful already use this model for their emoticons, and it could be extended to things like images in general like states for election conversation and such. I have always found the `[url]` solution to be incredibly bothersome and to some extent unintuitive, and with the advent of mobile devices, letting people write their posts in as few characters as possible is a big advantage to be taken into consideration when weighing the pros and cons.
filmgirlcw 14y ago
I disagree. I know I'm on the fringe but I make my living as a writer and 100% of my work is written in Markdown (MultiMarkdown, actually) that I then convert to HTML to paste into WordPress. Is it perfect for everyone, no, but for the subset of users who want to roll their own server setup and still have an easy-to-use publishing platform, it sure does fill a lot of boxes. Moreover, I can teach people Markdown 10x faster than I can teach them CMS-specific HTML rules. Moreover, WordPress's TinyMCE stuff can break quiet easily (we have to disable it for most of our writers, I'm still allowed to have it because I never use it), so having a readably syntax AND having an instant-preview seems pretty perfect.
- voidfiles 14y ago
  You aren't alone. There is actually a version of Markdown for writing Screenplays. When writers adopt Markdown then I am not sure who Markdown is not for.
  - 46Bit 14y ago
    Markdown as I see it is for those who are trying to emphasise the text over style, which especially means writers. What it doesn't mean is random webforums where every second post has a rainbow of colours, boldings and so forth.
- maguay 14y ago
  I'm another one who writes for a living and writes 100% in Markdown, then convert to HTML for Markdown. I just moved my own site to Kirby so I could publish with straight Markdown files. I know we're far from the only ones that do that.

pjbrunet 14y ago

Just open a new browser window, easy to do if your OS supports window tiling. A split-screen blog editor will take up just as much room. WordPress does have a "post preview" but it's not always 100% accurate. Opening the blog post in a new window is truly the only way to see what you're actually publishing.