Facebook Extending Markdown Support for Status Updates | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Extending Markdown Support for Status Updates

blog.praveen.science

Surprised this is on the front page, when it's clearly not true. Markdown support for statuses is only available for Workplace accounts.

Not exactly, it's been enabled for few folks in India. The screenshot I have posted is on Groups page on an Incognito Chrome window, where there are no extensions or plugins installed.

I don't understand why they would chose markdown instead of a true WYSIWYG input. The website post input already uses Draft.js, which is the editor that also powers the Notes product. All the pieces are there.

WYSIWYG is kinda difficult for developers to control the allowed HTML part as it can generate a lot of gibberish and null characters. The same goes with contenteditable too. The good thing is, if you have Markdown, you can export it to HTML, text, doc, PDF, or any other format.

Draft.js doesn't use the native browser content editable behaviour. It ensures that only valid markup can be generated: all text exists in a single block level element (p, h1, h2, li, blockquote) and then inline text can have an number of a developer-defined formatting options applied (emphasis, bold, links).

It doesn't have the compatibility problems and ambiguity that markdown suffers from.

It is WYSIWYG. I'm not sure why the article mentions markdown in the title, because the only clue about using markdown behind the scenes is that somebody found a "markdown help" pop-up buried in the code...

Interesting update. Though, it begs the question whether Facebook's current UI can handle such styling to its full extent.

That said, is posting on Facebook still a thing? I haven't used the platform in the last 3 years and get the idea that traditional status updates have evaporated.

Given that Workplace (the enterprise version of Facebook) has supported Markdown for a while now, I think it’s a safe assumption that they’ve built the UI to handle it.

Never heard of Workplace before. Does it have ads like normal Facebook UI?

Based on their FAQ (I don't use Workplace myself) "There are no ads in Workplace." https://www.workplace.com/workplace/faq

Yes and I’m sure you haven’t owned a TV in 15 years....

https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d...

Why do people act like such ignorance of popular trends is insightful?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com