Writing Content With Markdown

Introduction, Syntax, and Tools
How's it? This is Justin Schwartzenberger, and this course will teach you how to write and manage content for the web using the Markdown plain text formatting syntax. Markdown is designed to keep content readable, yet provide hints in the syntax that will convert to common HTML markup elements when published for the web. In this first module we will take a look at what Markdown is and where it is being used on the web, its relationship with HTML, and tooling available to write and preview Markdown documents. We will cover all the syntax in this first module. Yep, it's that light-weight. And you will come out fully prepared as we tackle creating different types of content throughout the rest this course.

Writing General Content
We've learned about the syntax and tooling for Markdown in module 1, but just how prevalent is Markdown out there in the world of the web? What does the workflow feel like to create say, a blog post using the Markdown syntax, and is Markdown only useful for content going to the web? We will answer these questions in this module as we look at content platforms that support Markdown, do a walkthrough of creating a complete blog post, and finally take a look at how the Markdown processor to HTML conversion can be used for e-publishing.

Writing Code Documentation and Samples
In this final module, we will take a look at using the Markdown syntax and workflow for technical writing. Markdown has an elegant and clean syntax for displaying code both as blocks and inline. Combined with an engine or service like a blogging platform or a static site generator, and some CSS and custom output formatting for code syntax highlighting, Markdown can be a great text format for writing and maintaining posts and articles about code. But first, we will kick off this last module by checking out how the Markdown syntax has been expanded to include additional HTML element support. As we get into writing content in the later clips, we will see how we can use this expanded syntax to create great technical documentation.