Add live-preview when editing Markdown files online (BB-3466)

In the Overview tab my README.md can be displayed. Unfortunately I have no preview of this, so this might take me several commits to get it right. It would be great if you offered a preview, so that I can write my readme directly in the browser, or at least paste it there to see it. For the issue tracker you already provide such a preview (albeit it is not previewing Markdown, but another format).

I suggest trying Hashify. It provides a pretty decent preview.

Yes, Hashify looks very good. Also http://rst.ninjs.org/ is a nice online editor for reStructuredText. Maybe one of them or both can be used on BB. Most of the code is already written, only the Look&Feel needs to be adopted to fit into the site.

Thanks for the link, André. We're certainly hoping to make improvements in this area, but we're busy working on other features just at the moment.

I just wanted to second this request for some means to preview our markdown, I would particularly love to see it for marking up comments/code Bitbucket style (i.e. https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Marking+up+Comments), which is something generic markdown previewers don't support.

Thanks!

Yep, I +1 this. It would be great to see.

+1

+1

Being able to preview bitbucket's specific syntax-highlighting would be handy.

+1

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+1 Hello, dear dev team! :] I know and understand, that you're treating BitBucket like an orphan child (because it is free for most users) and you're focusing all your powers on JIRA. But... did you noticed, that within two days we will celebrate second birthday since this issue was risen? Yes, two years has passed and you did nothing to a feature request, that most of us takes as crucial and fundamental. No matter, if you like this or not, we really need a live preview for all the Markdown edits!

Using external tools may solve basic Markdown display, but when using specific feature like syntax highlighting, it's another story.

And of course, using this becomes worse when you take documents from Github and bring it here, it just doesn't work (```lang vs :::lang).

Hi all, we currently offer preview functionality for markdown on all comments, pull request and issue descriptions, and wikis.

Just to clarify, what is being asked for here is specifically a preview for the README (or, presumably, other markdown files) when editing source online with Bitbucket?

That is what I understand and would like to have. To be able to edit a MD file and have a preview button before commit it.

Issue #8947 was marked as a duplicate of this issue.

+1

Yes exactly Zach, when I want to edit a .rst or .md file online, I would love to see a preview before I saw my changes. Because otherwise I will end up with 8 unnecessary commits, cause my readme/docs don’t get displayed as I hoped for. It seems trivial to add this feature, as BitBucket already is able to render such files, and there already are certain preview capabilities implemented. Would be very nice if you could add this.

+1 this is a very helpful feature to have a preview on markdown files.

come on people, just use github markdown already and be done with it

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I support the cause too. The problem is annoying for everyone who has notifications turned on.

Seriously, guys... It's been over 3 years now... http://i.imgur.com/eMhYvkK.jpg

Even worse, what works fine in hashify or dillinger fails in the bitbucket README.md file. So I have a README which is poorly formatted, because your formatting is not consistent with standard online tools, and you have no preview of your own.

..or if we can't have a preview feature, it'd be nice if Bitbucket renders *.md files exactly like Hashify, for example, so we could at least see what we're doing there instead.

C'mon...

:+1:

+1 why is this feature available when editing md files on wiki page.. and not when editing those files in src repo ?

This feature would be much appreciated - we are working on a project which uses markdown as its source files at the moment, and the wiki mode on bitbucket is nice!

At least fix markdown preview so it works as should according to specification. HTML comments should stay comments, shouldn't be escaped1!!!!!!

+1 I need this

+1 and I need some kind of general online markdown editor like https://stackedit.io/editor to check README.md changes on my computer.

+1 especially since Bitbucket has different parsing rules then some of the mentioned preview pages.

For instance, I did not know Bitbucket required 4 spaces of indentation for sublists.

Also, while a live preview would be preferred, a confirmation page with the preview on it would work too.

Happy 4th birthday! I'd say I'm late to the party but not as late as this feature.

Someone is making money out of this: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.mohamicorp.stash.plugin.editor-for-stash/server/overview Maybe that helps people...

+1 It would be great to have this implemented.

I don't know why exactly, but I have one repo which has a link that allows me to edit the README.md and has a button that shows me the preview of the file. I have several other repos with a README.md that does NOT allow me to edit the README.md. I don't know what the difference is other than when I created the new repo, I created the README.md from the bitbucket webpage, whereas the others probably already existed in an imported git repo.

+1 that would be great

+1 I just had this issue yesterday of not being able to preview the .md file. What made it worse was that I used an external editor to view what I was doing and then I realized that bitbucket was not rendering the code block syntax correctly (while other markdown editors were) If I had a preview I would have adjusted to the lack of syntax support.

+1 for this issue. we should be able to preview the readme!

+1 This is all to common everywhere else for it to not be a feature. Also, I can't believe it was requested 5 years ago but nothing has happened...

Just came here, see it's been 5 years already. It seems impossible to find an online tool that matches bitbucket syntax exactly so there is always this suspense when you edit your files. Is it good ? How many ridiculous commits will be necessary ? I just created a private dummy repo to test my md file... So weird.

+1

Just saw a preview of the markdown file on bitbucket cloud version. Dunno if others are seeing it too?

Yep, I see it too. Great!

Georges or anyone, where exactly do you see the preview?

+1 Would be useful.

Wiktor Tomczak, in Bitbucket on the "Overview" section of a repo there is the display of your standard Readme.md that gets shown. Right there on the page there is a link "Edit README" if you click on that you will get a md editor and preview.

Oddly enough if you browse the source code and edit the README.md file from there, then there is no preview.

So it seems like Bitbucket has this capability to preview markdown but it is on one place.

To Atlassian team, it's nonsense like this that make me favor GitHub over BitBucket.

I think the ability to preview the repository readme file has been there for a long time, but .md files in a repository can't be previewed (even though they can also be edited via the web interface).

It has already been said quite a few times, but this would be really useful. Happy 5th birthday issue #3491!

Existing markdown doesn't work with existing tools like Atom or Macdown.

It makes it a huge pain to update README.md files

+1. There is diff between hashify and bitbucket's implementation. This feature is very important for editing markdowns online.

Bitbucket's markdown parser can't correctly parse the markdown syntax. Please support this feature. It's been 5 years.

The preview of markdown parser from Bitbucket should be provided.

Would be nice to have the preview option for README.md because it wrongly renders markdown.

+1. Waiting for correct MD renderer. Live preview also is very useful feature. Also MD editor looks broken: there is no preview button now.

This is killing me :) I need a preview in order to edit effectively and not add commits to my edit cycle. If I use another markdown previewer tool, Bitbucket does not render it (in some cases, even remotely) like the preview tool does. If bitbucket adds it's own flavors it needs it's ow previewer. README's are a luxury to me now: for times when I have nothing other than mucking with markdown edit cycles to do.