Markdown is a lightweight markup language. When developers want to format code without sacrificing legibility, Markdown is a good solution. For example, GitHub uses Markdown to show the documentation, which is the .md file.
Microsoft recently announced the introduction of a Markdown editor in Visual Studio based on developer feedback. In the recent Visual Studio 17.5 preview, Microsoft brought Markdown editing capabilities to the IDE. Now, when developers must make changes to Markdown files in a project, they can do so without leaving Visual Studio.
As can be seen from the official demo diagram, developers can edit Markdown files in Visual Studio while previewing the editing effect on the right.
The Markdown editor in Visual Studio provides the following advantages:
Supports syntax highlighting for easy parsing
Decorators such as strikethrough and bold can be applied directly in the editor
A preview window showing how the rendered HTML will look: The preview can be brought up on the right side of the editor via the Shift+F7 shortcut. There is also a button in the upper left corner of the editor that toggles the preview on and off.
In addition, most of the standard controls that users are familiar with in the Visual Studio editor also apply to the Markdown editor. For example, try using Shift+Alt+Down Arrow to create multiple carets and quickly modify bulleted lists.
The Markdown editor will also support a spell checker, coming soon to Visual Studio.
