Show HN: Markdown-UI – Write UI/UX with Markdown Syntax

I don't know what to make of this. I like the general idea but I really don't like the use of Markdown here.

Markdown makes writing markup faster and reading markup easier. It's a limited set of syntax elements optimised for writing and reading text. No more, no less. It is not, however, a new set of language elements to be used for whatever purpose.

For example, how is this:

  __Basic Button|Icon：User,Text：Add Friend__ 

Any better than this?

  <button icon="user" text="Add Friend">

Even YAML seems to be much better suited for structured data like this.

  button
      icon: text
      text: Add Friend

If your aim really is to "lessen the cognitive load", why not work with tools that better work towards that goal?

Please don't ever make buttons with <div>s! [0]

Focusable should be the default, as many folks can't (or don't want to) use a mouse. Use the semantic <button> tag or even just an <a> with role="button" and you'll get accessibility for free.

[0]: http://thatjdanisso.cool/a11y/clicking-with-a-keyboard/

I like the idea of using something like Markdown to write GUI descriptions. But I don't think pressing a meta-language into Markdown is the way to go. Better use the same principles and create your own language. The principles are: text is formatted nearly the same way a plain text email would have been formatted, overview of the grammar is more important than complexity.

Don't be disappointed though if the result is not better than the solutions using XML, JSON or YAML that already exist.

Maybe something like funciton would add a new perspective to it: http://esolangs.org/wiki/Funciton

Why not just inline html? doesn't conflict with pre-existing markdown specifications, more usable for breaking out of document flow (if one is making a proper form, this helps a lot)

> Focusable Button

why not just have all of them be focus-able? I mean, unless you have a strong dislike of people who don't use mice, this shouldn't be an option

I built something similar called Formdown: https://github.com/bradgessler/formdown

If you're wondering why something like this would be useful, it's great for prototyping interactive web pages of UIs. A non-technical person can easily write out their ideas and a more technical person can covert the markdown into real form markup.

Anyone interested in this should also look at

* Marx, the CSS framework without classes: https://github.com/mblode/marx

* Classless, the HTML5 framework and themes for CMS-like templates: http://fiatjaf.alhur.es/classless/

What is the different goal here compared to Salt? http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/salt.html

It's a good beginning even if there are already some good alternatives out there as well.

Wishing to see how you solve the problems of layouts and nested layouts (including transitions in between). I really hope you can simplify the current state of the art, because, at least for me personally UI programming is a pain (too many options and abstractions I do not know).

That's not what User Experience means.

Maybe I'm not getting something quite right, but why is there a "UX" in the title?

I don't get the fascination with "markdown". Even for messaging systems, BBcode ([i]like this[/i]) was easier. Markdown is always fighting with indentation for other purposes.

I don't think this should use the name of "Markdown" in the name, this is a niche feature this just waters down the meaning of "Markdown".

I'm not willing to learn a new set of markup just to not write some HTML (I'm glad that Markdown plays nice with it).

link to repo https://github.com/jjuliano/markdown-ui