Anytime I need to edit Markdown, I reach for the WMD editor. Their splitscreen demo is the most effective way to edit Markdown that I have seen.
The left screen is the editor and the right screen is the "real-time" preview of the Markdown. It is nice because I don't have to press a preview button to see rendered Markdown. The Markdown is also rendered as I type so I get instantaneous feedback of my changes.
There is also a Save Text Area Firefox addon, which enables me to save/load the contents of a text area to/from a file on the filesystem. Also the Ctrl+s shortcut saves the file.
So when editing Markdown, I:
- Open Firefox and go to http://wmd-editor.com/examples/splitscreen?blank=1
- Load or Save a markdown file by right-clicking the editor screen
- Going to the Text submenu
- Clicking Load or Save As
- Edit the file and see the generated output
Of course, its not a text editor replacement, since the possible text manipulation in Firefox is limited, but the feedback that is provided by WMD is very effective to rapid Markdown editing. I hope this sort of UI becomes more common.
Now if only there were a similar Textile editor...