Markdown Monster Blog

Why use a dedicated Markdown Editor?

(Rick Strahl) — Sat, 25 May 2019 22:46:24 GMT

I often get asked why anybody would need a dedicated Markdown Editor. After all, just about any of the many multi-purpose editors out there today provide decent Markdown editing support with basic previewing and syntax highlighting.

So why would you need a tools like Markdown Monster as a dedicated Markdown editor?

That's a fair question. I use multi-purpose editors most of my developer day. I use Visual Studio Code as my primary text and project editor and I have it open almost continuously throughout the day for editing code and all sorts of text documents. It serves as my project browser, terminal, development tool and general purpose text and script editor. And yes, I even use it to edit Markdown text quite frequently, because frankly the Markdown support in VS Code is pretty decent - for a generic editor.

So why use a Custom Editor like Markdown Monster?

But when it comes to doing some serious writing, meaning I'm writing a longer piece of documentation, a blog post or article, I'll reach for a real editor - in my case Markdown Monster (and yes I'm biased since I'm the author).

Generic editor Markdown support is great, but these editors are just that - generic editors that provide text editing with some additional previewing of rendered Markdown. If quick editing of a small bit of text is all you need - that's great - an editor will serve you well for Markdown.

But if you're using Markdown for more than just writing a short Readme.md in your favorite Github repo, you may find that there are a lot of things that can be optimized while writing Markdown text. Even though Markdown is text centric and can be entered almost entirely via keyboard entered text, that doesn't mean that there aren't a host of optimizations that you can apply to provide a better editing workflow.

With Markdown Monster I've optimized with what is an optimal workflow for me which is for the most part writing documentation and blog posts that contain lots of image content, code and basic markup.

Markdown Monster provides a host of features that you're not likely to find in a plain editor.

Here's a list of a few things that go beyond basic editing features:

Rich Image Support

You can embed images into MM in a variety of ways: Using markdown text, using a smart image dialog that can detect clipboard images and image Urls, pasting images directly from the Clipboard or dragging and dropping images from Web pages, Explorer or any Shell operation into the markdown document directly.

Capture and Embed Screen Shots

MM comes with a built-in Screen Capture tool that lets you select windows to capture. You can run delayed captures to capture mouse cursors and actions (like dropped down menus). If you use SnagIt MM can use it to capture screen content, or you can use trusty old Ctrl & Alt PrtScn to capture a Window or the Screen and then simply paste it into the Markdown document.

The tool is basic, and you can certainly use external tools like SnagIt, the Windows Snipping tool or any other tool and copy the image to the clipboard, then paste it in Markdown document.

MM also integrates directly with SnagIt so you can set up the built-in screen capture to use SnagIt instead of the integrated capture using the same capture and auto-paste workflow.

Images captured and stored to disk from clipboard or screen captured are also automatically compressed to minimize size.

Inline Spell Checking

If you're writing Markdown content you likely are writing text, and that text should be spell checked.

Embedding of Links

MM includes a link dialog that lets you highlight text, click (or press Ctrl-K) and automatically create a link to a URL on your clipboard or by typing in the URL. This often is much faster than manually typing the Markdown link syntax. With MM this becomes Select Text/Ctrl-K/Enter.

You can also link to in document links using the Link picker or Document Outline:

MM also includes a built-in Link Checker that makes it easy to find bad links.

Publishing Content to a Weblog

If you're writing blog posts and you are using a service that uses Wordpress, MetaWeblog API or Medium, you can directly publish your Markdown to the Weblog using the built-in Weblog Addin.

The addin also optionally stores posts and dependencies locally so you can easily republish and search content.

If you're using static site generators like Jekyll or Ghost - that works just fine too, but you don't really need publishing tools for these platforms.

Paste HTML as Markdown

MM lets you convert HTML to Markdown. If you pick up lightly formatted HTML that uses Markdown supported HTML constructs, you can turn that HTML into Markdown simply by selecting some HTML in a browser and using the Paste Html as Markdown menu option to paste it. To be clear, this won't work with all HTML - any HTML that doesn't fit within the limited confines of Markdown's support HTML set is pasted as raw HTML.

Create PDF and HTML Output

You can easily create PDF and HTML output from your Markdown. MM can save rendered HTML as an HTML document either in raw form without custom styling or provide the full content used to render the preview which includes Preview styles. PDF output is statically generated from rendered HTML and makes for an easy, self-contained document that includes all formatting and images. You can also easily see the rendered HTML output or preview output in an external browser.

Customize the HTML Preview

MM uses Web based templates to render the HTML preview. Several different styles are provided and you can easily create your own template that matches whatever target your final Markdown rendered HTML has to be deployed in. Templates are plain HTML and CSS and can be created in minutes to provide you a custom preview template that formats the Markdown output the way you want it.

Templating Support using C# and Razor

MM has support for a C# based Templating Addin (Snippets Addin) that lets you create text expansions for Markdown, including full support for C# scripting via Razor. This lets you create sophisticated scripts to embed content into your Markdown document dynamically.

Extend Markdown Monster via Addins or Commander Addin

Want to enhance MM with your own functionality? Need to do something special in your Markdown documents or simply want a new UI feature that MM doesn't provide? You can extend Markdown Monster via .NET based Addins with little effort. Alternately you can use the Commander Addin to create simple automation tasks without creating a full blown addin.

Summary

Generic editors are great, and for many basic editing tasks they are perfectly fine. But if you find yourself writing a lot of text in Markdown you might want to check out a dedicated editor like Markdown Monster to see if you can improve your productivity with a few helpful features that facilitate an optimized workflow for things like image and link embedding and performing tasks that actually do something with your markdown other than just writing it. Give it a try - you may find you end up more productive...

Favorites for better Document Management in Markdown Monster

(Rick Strahl) — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 09:01:05 GMT

I've just put out Version 1.12.6 of Markdown Monster which includes a new feature: Favorites which lets you pin favorite files and folders to a new favorites side panel.

This may seem like a small feature, but for me at least this was one of the last missing pieces in my document management work flow in Markdown Monster. I use Markdown for so much stuff these days that it's becoming difficult to keep track of where files are located or even just remembering what's important 😀.

Using favorites you can add any kind of file (not just Markdown Files) or folders to the favorites list.

I have a lot of notes and lists that I keep in Markdown files and one of the biggest annoyances has been to keep track of the various ever reused files. Even with Markdown Monsters configurable and optionally very long recent files list, I find that often when working on a project I open so many Markdown files in a single project that the Recent List often becomes useless and many of my frequently used files that I really want to track keep dropping off these lists and I then end up having to try and remember where they live.

Favorites address this issue nicely by allowing me to keep my often reused files linked in one place along with an easy way to add favorites and organize them into groups via drag and drop. Favorites are obviously nothing new, but most document editors oddly don't have this super useful feature built-in.

Favorites in Markdown Monster

So with that idea in mind, I added Favorites to Markdown Monster's UI. There are three parts:

The Favorites Panel to add/edit/find and navigate Favorites
Places to open the Favorites Panel from
Places to add Favorites from

Here's what this Favorites Panel looks like:

You can access the favorites panel either from the toolbar button or from the Recent Files Menu dropdown which is accessible from multiple places:

You can add Favorites from the Tab Context menu of the active tab:

or from the folder browser:

Lists, Lists Everywhere There's Lists

If you're anything like me you probably manage a number of lists:

Various ToDo lists
Meeting notes
Phone log notes
Blog posts or post/article ideas
Client project notes and credentials
etc.

Most of these types of files I use constantly, but even though they are frequently used, they often fall of Markdown Monster's Recently Used list. Having a single place to go to to find files I frequently use makes it much more likely for me to use Markdown keeping track of things especially like Meeting notes or client errata that I need.

Another related useful feature of Markdown Monster is its ability to create encrypted files that are password protected. This allows me to store sensitive information like logon credentials in Markdown files securely. This feature is available from the File -> Save As Encrypted File menu option and writes out the file in an encrypted format that is password protected.

To open the file again you have to provide a password.

Summary

Favorites are not a very glamorous marquee feature, but it is a very useful one, especially over time as more files are accumulated and you use Markdown more and more. Having an easy way to store common file links and being able to quickly access them is a huge feature if you manage a lot of files in disparate locations. I know for me, although I just started using it this is already a big time saver and has increased my use of Markdown for common tasks that previously seemed too tedious because of the file location issues.

So if you're using Markdown Monster check out the new Favorites feature and see if it can't make you more productive using Markdown.

this post created and published with Markdown Monster

FolderBrowser Enhancements in Markdown Monster

(Rick Strahl) — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 12:00:00 GMT

The folder browser may not be a very high profile feature in Markdown Monster, but there have been a surprising number of requests around the folder browser behavior and operation. In version 1.8.12 I've done a lot of work to address a number of the issues that were brought up and added a ton of new useful features as well as cleaning up the user interface to be a bit more intuitive.

Let's take a look.

File Icons

This feature was actually added in 1.8.8, but it's a nice visual update to the folder browser that I think makes the user experience much nicer. By popular request I added icons to the file browser with popular file type icons for many common file extensions and especially developer file extensions.

Judge for yourself but it makes finding files at a glance a lot easier in busy folders:

Also new are the folder tab icons and better differentiation between the active and inactive tabs.

In the last update there have been a couple of new ways to navigate to files in addition to the original textbox and folder dialog browser ways.

First the folder dialog is now a combobox with autocomplete that provides path completion as you type or you can use the drop down to pick a file from the path matches you've typed in:

You can also use environment variables for in the folder text box such as %appdata% or %programfiles% for example.

When inside of the folder browser file hierarchy you can now also simply double click (or use the Context menu) to drill re-open the folder browser at the selected path.

Note that there's also a new .. folder that lets you navigate up the hierarchy to a parent directory which makes it much easier to navigate deeper trees of files. You can double-click this folder to open the Folder Browser at the parent location.

You can now also open the Folder Browser in the current document using the current document's tab:

Drag and Drop of Images and Documents

This is not a new feature, but there are a number of improvements in the Image drag and drop support from the Folder Browser into the editor. You can easily drop images into your documents at a specific editor position. Just drag an image where you want it in the Markdown document.

If the image is in a relative path it's simply dropped, otherwise MM prompts (optionally) to optionally copy the file to a relative location so the document is more portable.

If you drag other documents Markdown Monster will try to open them if they are of a registered extension from the EditorExtensionMappings configuration setting.

Unrelated, but you can also drag and drop images from Explorer into documents, but it's more limited in that the drop location is the previous cursor position. If possible use the folder browser as you get to precisely drop images where you want them.

Folder Browser Performance Improvements

In this release the way the folder browser is populated has been updated to only load the current folder and dynamically load child folders as you open them. Previously all folders were loaded up front which could be quite slow on large folder hierarchies. You should see improved folder browser load performance in most cases.

Note that the Folder Browser can still be slow if you open folders with very large numbers of files (in excess of 500).

The Folder Browser has a number of useful features that you can find on the context menu:

Especially useful are the options to open a Terminal or Explorer in the current or selected folder. If a file is selected you can also push that file to Git immediately assuming the folder is under source control and Git is already configured.

New in this update are Copy Path to Clipboard, **Open Folder Browser here and Find in Files (discussed next).

Find in Files

Another new feature is the Find in Files feature that lets you search for files. You can press ctrl-f anywhere in the folder browser to bring up the Search pane on the folder browser.

The folder pane by default searches in the current folder, but you can also search all sub-trees. When searching sub-trees files are shown in the entire hierarchy.

There's a gotcha with searching sub-tress though: If the folder hierarchy is very deep, this can be slow as MM has to load each folder that wasn't previously loaded. In short, use this only on reasonably sized folder structures. It would not be a good idea to do off the Root folder.

Summary

There you have it. Lots of updates in a very specific area of Markdown Monster that is surprisingly well travelled and has generated a large amount of discussion and feature requests.

I hope these updates make using Markdown Monster more convenuent to use by providing a host of support features that are the primary reason to be using a dedicated Markdown editor in the first place.

There are still more features to be added. Namely detection of changes in the file system without having to explicitly refresh the current folder, and Git intregation.

What's on your list for folder and file navigation? Got an idea of a missing feature - post an issue on Github and if it's useful we'll add it.

Creating a Markdown Monster Addin: Save Images to Azure Blob Storage

(Rick Strahl) — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 12:00:00 GMT

The Markdown Monster Markdown Editor and Weblog Publishing tool has a .NET based addin model that makes it relatively easy to extend its core feature set with custom functionality. In this post I show how you can quickly create an addin of your own, and then show a practical example that demonstrates how add Image uploading to Azure Blob storage as an interactive addin.

Getting Images into Markdown Documents and Weblog Posts with Markdown Monster

(Rick Strahl) — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 12:04:43 GMT

One good justification for using a rich editor for editing Markdown or a Weblog entry is that you can provide some additional features above and beyond what a simple text or code editor can provide. When you're creating content you are usually dealing with a number of things beyond plain text like code snippets, feature widgets and most importantly - **images**. Markdown Monster

Introducing Markdown Monster - a new Markdown Editor

(Rick Strahl) — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 12:00:00 GMT

I'm happy to announce Version 1.0 of Markdown Monster a Markdown Editor and Weblog Publishing tool for Windows. In this post I give a quick tour of Markdown Monster and provide links to all you need to know to check out this great new Markdown editor.

Markdown Monster Blog

Why use a dedicated Markdown Editor?

So why use a Custom Editor like Markdown Monster?

Rich Image Support

Capture and Embed Screen Shots

Inline Spell Checking

Embedding of Links

Publishing Content to a Weblog

Paste HTML as Markdown

Create PDF and HTML Output

Customize the HTML Preview

Templating Support using C# and Razor

Extend Markdown Monster via Addins or Commander Addin

Summary

Favorites for better Document Management in Markdown Monster

Favorites in Markdown Monster

Lists, Lists Everywhere There's Lists

Summary

FolderBrowser Enhancements in Markdown Monster

File Icons

Folder Navigation

Drag and Drop of Images and Documents

Folder Browser Performance Improvements

New Folder Browser Context Menu Options

Find in Files

Summary

Creating a Markdown Monster Addin: Save Images to Azure Blob Storage

Getting Images into Markdown Documents and Weblog Posts with Markdown Monster

Introducing Markdown Monster - a new Markdown Editor

Markdown Monster Blog

Why use a dedicated Markdown Editor?

So why use a Custom Editor like Markdown Monster?

Rich Image Support

Capture and Embed Screen Shots

Inline Spell Checking

Embedding of Links

Publishing Content to a Weblog

Paste HTML as Markdown

Create PDF and HTML Output

Customize the HTML Preview

Templating Support using C# and Razor

Extend Markdown Monster via Addins or Commander Addin

Summary

Favorites for better Document Management in Markdown Monster

Favorites in Markdown Monster

Lists, Lists Everywhere There's Lists

Related Feature: Encrypted Markdown Files

Summary

FolderBrowser Enhancements in Markdown Monster

File Icons

Folder Navigation

Drag and Drop of Images and Documents

Folder Browser Performance Improvements

New Folder Browser Context Menu Options

Find in Files

Summary

Creating a Markdown Monster Addin: Save Images to Azure Blob Storage

Getting Images into Markdown Documents and Weblog Posts with Markdown Monster

Introducing Markdown Monster - a new Markdown Editor