bbcode vs. Markdown

What do you guys think about using Markdown instead of BBCode on the forum?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example

We're all used to BBCode but I think Markdown is more intuitive, especially for people who aren't into coding as much

For example to italicize, you simply *use asterisks*

For lists all you have to do is
* use
* asterisks
* like bullets

I'm all for Markdown. Besides being more intuitive it simply requires fewer keystrokes (eg. **bold** vs [b ]bold[/b]). Also, I can never get used to BBCode hyperlinks, but Markdown hyperlinks are as easy as [text](http://link).

The only thing I don't like about Markdown is that when you make numbered lists it always starts from 1 regardless of how you actually numbered it, but that certainly isn't a deal breaker.

Looks good, another vote for Markdown.

Markdown looks pretty and intuitive. Another vote!

Yep, I can get behind moving to Markdown.

Alright, I made the switch to Markdown

Old posts are still parsed as BBCode.
Additionally, if you quote a BBCode post, your post will also be in BBCode to avoid formatting issues. Eventually as old posts stop being quoted, everything will be in Markdown.

There are some CSS things I need to fix, e.g. quotes are huge:

> Abraham Lincoln said:
> Test

Markdown also doesn't support a lot of the formatting that BBCode did:
- underline
- text alignment
- text colors
- font sizes (you can use h1-h6 headers, but nothing for smaller fonts, and again the CSS for headers is messed up)
- videos and spoilers

I think we can do without underline and text alignment. I can probably hack the rest but wanted everyone to try out Markdown first and make sure we wanted to switch before wasting time on it.

So let's all give it a try for a couple weeks and see what everyone thinks.

Also note that, unlike strict Markdown, single line breaks are allowed, and raw HTML is disabled

My main concern is that Markdown won't work well for certain forum-related things like quotes and spoilers.

Lines that start with > are quotes, but it gets weird when trying to attribute that quote to a user and post.

Looks like Stackoverflow uses >! to signify a spoiler, I'll see if I can add that on.

So what the new thing does becouse i'm too lazy to read everything

> [Aleksanderus](/users/Aleksanderus) said:
> So what the new thing does becouse i'm too lazy to read everything

It's the text formatting for posts. The bold, italic, etc. toolbar is a lot smaller now, and the text is formatted differently.

Bold in BBCode:

```
bold
```

Bold in Markdown:

```
**bold**
```

> [capristo](/users/capristo) said:
> > [Aleksanderus](/users/Aleksanderus) said:
> > So what the new thing does becouse i'm too lazy to read everything
>
> It's the text formatting for posts. The bold, italic, etc. toolbar is a lot smaller now, and the text is formatted differently.
>
> Bold in BBCode:
>
> ```
> bold
> ```
>
> Bold in Markdown:
>
> ```
> **bold**
> ```
Oh OK thanks!

^ That's a good example of the weirdness of Markdown. Even with the single line breaks enabled, you have to leave 2 line breaks after a quote, otherwise it assumes the text following the quote is part of the quote

> [capristo](/users/capristo) said:
> ^ That's a good example of the weirdness of Markdown. Even with the single line breaks enabled, you have to leave 2 line breaks after a quote, otherwise it assumes the text following the quote is part of the quote

Hmm... i don't know what to think about it. I mean it looks good but there are less options when writing and sometimes weird things like that^ happens

I think Markdown is meant to be easier to type manually, rather than typing out HTML tags or mousing over to the format buttons.
Testing line break

>Quote
>Line break in quote
>
>Double break in quote

Outside of quote again.

While I've never minded manually typing bbcode, I happen to end up doing a lot of stuff manually, soo

What do you guys think so far? Markdown doesn't seem great for some stuff like quoting and colors