Stacks Editor

Showcasing our new editing experience for Stack Overflow

Here’s a thought

What if our editor removed the preview state entirely? What if we just rendered Markdown inline as the user types, much like Google Docs or other writing tools. Allowing users to do so would offer a better experience, since writing is closer to the final output. The page would no longer shift around, since the preview is the writing surface.

For those users that are more familiar with the Markdown writing experience, we can offer a tab to write traditional Markdown ala Wordpress’ post writing experience. We can store a cookie that remembers the user’s last writing preference.


Let’s show off some features.

Images

Here's an image of “Kermit the frog” typing furiously on a typewriter:


Links

Links can be shown inline. Alternatively, you can use reference-style links, too.

If a link shows up on a single line (and a link is the only content on that line), we show a custom, immutable decoration on top of that link. This decoration won’t become part of the document markup. It’s a demonstration of a potential way to handle the preview of oneboxed content.

https://example.com

Code

inline code and code blocks are available, too:

bash
#! /usr/bin/env bash

echo "Freeing up disc space..."
sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
echo "Done!"

Alternatively, you can use indented code blocks

plaintext
console.log("Hello, World!");

Lists

Ordered:

  1. we

  2. can

  3. have

  4. ordered lists

Unordered:

  • unordered

  • lists

    • even with nesting

  • and back again

Formatting

bold, italics, even strikethrough are available

HTML elements

We’re allowing certain HTML elements in our markdown. You can find a full list of supported elements in this meta post.

Keyboard elements: Esc, Enter, Backspace

Then we’ve got superscript and subscript. If you prefer, you can use em and strong tags over markdown notation.

And you can use HTML to define lists:

  1. One
  2. Two
  3. Three

And description lists as well:

Description term
Description details
Look, another term
And another set of details!
Yet another term
The last of the details

Miscellaneous

Horizontal rules:


Tag links:


blockquotes:

“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet”

Abraham Lincoln

and spoilers:

IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY.

Don't forget tables:

ReasonCoolness factorApproved
They've got columns500✅
And rows9000✅
and different alignment9001đŸ”„