https://www.pakstech.com/blog/typora-review/
The title might already give away my opinion on Typora so let me start by saying it again. Typora is my favorite Markdown editor, period. With that out of the way let's continue on with the why.
I want to start with a little bit of background. I've built this website with a static site generator called Hugo which basically eats content files as Markdown and spits out a bunch of HTML files that can easily be hosted on the Internet. I've actually written a whole series of blog posts on starting a blog with Hugo, check out my latest tutorial if you're interested in learning more about starting a static blog.
So, because of my chosen blogging technology I'm spending quite some time writing content in Markdown. Therefore it's quite important for my sanity to make the process as painless as possible. Markdown is not so difficult to read on its own but still reading and editing properly formatted text à la Microsoft Word is just that much more satisfying.
So what does Typora exactly do then that pleases my eye so much? It is an inline WYSIWYG editor for Markdown that renders the content as I'm typing it. If I add a new heading with a bunch of # characters it will actually look like a heading. Similarly having italic or bold text just shows the final result without displaying the asterisks.
Right now the software is in free beta which means that you can use it for free. There is no information on when the beta phase will end though so be prepared to pay sometime in the future. Personally, I'd be happy to support the development if they end up going with a one time payment model instead of a subscription.
The software is available for Windows, macOS and Linux so no matter what OS you're using there is a version for you. This is also great if you are using more than one computer with different OS'es like me.
When you start the editor up it is truly minimal. There is just the writing area and nothing distracting on the window itself. If you're working on a single file then this will allow you to fully concentrate on that single piece of text. Despite this minimalism it has pretty much all the features you need.
Assumedly you're already familiar with with Markdown so I probably don't need to go that deep into the syntax. I don't honestly have a thing for mountains but I had to come up with something so here's some example text to see how it renders on Typora.
# I like mountains
Mountains are great! [Wikipedia](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain>) says this about mountains:
> A mountain is a large landform that rises above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak.
If you want to hear more about mountains *continue reading!*
## Highlights
Mountains provide many activities:
- you can climb then
- you can photograph them
- and **much more**
This is how the file looks like in Typora:
As you can see the file looks like it was rendered to HTML (which it actually is internally). Many other Markdown editors have separate editor and preview views but here you write and read on the same view. In addition to being an overall nice experience you're also saving screen real estate for multitasking with other applications.
You can choose from different built in themes and install additional themes from the Typora themes page. You could even create your own theme. In this example I had the GitHub theme enabled.
When you place the caret near a formatted piece of text such as italicized or bold text the actual Markdown for that piece becomes visible. So you still know what's going on but as soon as you go somewhere else that markup gets out of your way.
If you don't remember all the Markdown syntax you can insert items and formatting easily from the top menu or by using keyboard shortcuts. For example adding code fences is snappy with “Option + Command + C” on macOS or “Ctrl + Shift + K” on Windows. And if you define the code language the editor will apply syntax highlighting to the block.
Adding links is also super quick. If you have copied a link to the clipboard you can hit “Command + K” or “Ctrl + K” and the required Markdown will be added with the URL already in place. You can also highlight a piece of text and use the shortcut to make it a link.