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Asked: 2026-05-10T17:24:26+00:00

I want to build a site where the user can enter text and format

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I want to build a site where the user can enter text and format it in Markdown. The reason I’d like a Javascript solution is because I want to display a live preview, just like on StackOverflow.

My site is not targeted at developers, however, so an editor control would be ideal.

I gather that on StackOverflow, the WMD editor is being used.

A quick search on Google also turns up Showdown library, which I think is actually being used by WMD.

Are there any other options? Are WMD/Showdown great tools already? What have been your experiences with the different options?

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  1. If you’re not averse to using Ajax to generate the live preview, then another option is markItUp!. markItUp! is a universal markup-editor, and very flexible. It does provide an easy way of creating a markup editor, but unlike WMD, it doesn’t provide its own live preview.

    I used markItUp!, along with a simple JSP (using MarkdownJ) for one of my open-source projects (a Markdown plugin for Roller). If you’re using another server-side technology, replace that simple JSP as appropriate.

    I actually starting using this before I came across WMD. I’d agree, WMD is great, but has only just been open-sourced and is, at this stage, more difficult to customize the behavior of.

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