my feelings about markdown
I think the first time I came into proper contact with Markdown to design a webpage or write something was while trying out omg.lol for a while (I don't really count the little Markdown included in some messenger features). I had a good time there, but ultimately let it run out because I already had my own website where I could be a bit more artistically free and have more pages; so another website being some sort of carrd-esque online business card summarizing the same stuff that's on my website seemed a bit silly. Especially since I am not a content creator or freelancer of any kind having to sell myself online and I have no socials either, so I didn't even need it as an aggregator of links on where to keep up with me or see my work.
I come from the time where we all wrote in BBCode in forums, when MySpace let you customize your page and several pet online games let you play around with the layout also. I remember being 13 or so and having a Piczo website, and later editing the code of my Tumblr theme (and back then, they let you switch the post editor to HTML mode, too). A lot of this stuff was either similar to HTML (see the BBCode), or was downright using HTML.
So far, every time I was forced to use Markdown, especially almost exclusively due to design restraints, I was a bit pissed. I sometimes am still pissed here on Bearblog, but at least the posts let you sneak in a bit of HTML here and there. Though depending on how you do it, it messes with headings and images or suddenly changes font and size.
I know the advantages of Markdown, obviously; simplicity and minimalism, quick writing, easy to learn, easy to keep readable text while still offering some formatting, but not an overwhelming amount. And it does that well! Creator John Gruber said:
“A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.” It succeeds in that.
But man, do I feel restrained using it. I'm a person who wants more granular control and design freedom. It doesn't have enough formatting options for me. It regularly makes me ask myself why we didn't just stick to HTML which offers the same formatting options and more. You can just limit yourself to the HTML options you need and we others use more! But obviously, as said above, HTML looks ugly and is full of formatting instructions. I get why people don't like it, but I love it.
The little CSS box services like omg.lol and Bearblog offer is good for a little more customization and changing some features, but not enough. It's all very static, very globally applied to the entire blog, which is great if you go for a really uniform and professional look. Whenever I edit it, I have to keep in mind though that it will be applied to old posts too. I cannot just have a design for one post only with that. If I want that, I need to write specific stuff into that post; and I usually want or need HTML for that. Which works with some HTML, I think I miss a simple way to have a small, italic font choice in Markdown aside from just fixed headings. I don't just want titles over paragraphs, but small descriptions underneath images. Like this; why does Markdown not have a quick way to do this, too?
A lot of it simply comes down to what I am used to, of course, and my own wishes in regards to stylizing a post. It probably says a lot that I loved to engage in "CSS crimes" when I still had a Cohost account (hello, Cohost refugees, by the way; I had deleted my account a few months ago), making a post look like Windows XP with inline CSS in the HTML, for example.
This entire thing is a little "old man yelling at cloud", even though Markdown is also pretty old and established. I catch myself trying to write out stuff in HTML and having to revert once I realize. For some reason, I just don't find the Markdown syntax intuitive and have to look it up. Some of it is downright a regression to me - like tables in HTML vs. tables in Markdown. I love when services still let you write a lot of HTML and don't restrict it too hard (sadly, I found it way too restrictive on omg.lol).
If I had to choose, I would choose HTML over Markdown any day.
Published 13 Sep, 2024, edited 5 days, 12 hours ago