It would help people to comprehend the vast mysteries of markdown if preview matched reality as per above.

We can definitely improve this, but there are limitations and catches.

1. If we make it incredibly accurate then it's slower (i.e. we send it off to the server and do the processing and deliver to you what the server will do)
   
2. If we make the server do that work, we will still only do 80%... the last 20% are the embedding, mentions processing, which are currently done after you post it as some things might be slow (some embeds require us visiting a third party server for info)
   
   

We had the choice to deliver a client side preview that is a good approximation of the capabilities of the server and deliver a real-time and instant preview (it's done on your device).

Or, to deliver a highly accurate preview and potentially introduce a lot of lag (a 1 second round trip including processing) for every time you press the preview button.

We chose high speed and no lag, as that is the more pleasing experience. We accepted the downside is that all of the edge cases will be posted, and then subsequently edited... which isn't a great experience, but we hope fewer people experience this, and only then during the acclimatisation phase (which has only affected this forum which we've imported).

There is a third option: Make both client side and server side render Markdown the same way. At least the straightforward cases. You just need a good complete example page and double check that the main bits are the same. Something like this except with images (make sure it has alt texts):

An exhibit of Markdown

This note demonstrates some of what Markdown is capable of doing.

Note: Feel free to play with this page. Unlike regular notes, this doesn't automatically save itself.

Basic formatting

Paragraphs can be written like so. A paragraph is the basic block of Markdown. A paragraph is what text will turn into when there is no reason it should become anything else.

Paragraphs must be separated by a blank line. Basic formatting of italics and bold is supported. This *can be nested like* so.

Lists

Ordered list

1. Item 1
   
2. A second item
   
3. Number 3
   
4. Ⅳ
   
   

Note: the fourth item uses the Unicode character for Roman numeral four.

Unordered list

• An item
  
• Another item
  
• Yet another item
  
• And there's more...
  
  

Paragraph modifiers

Code block

Code blocks are very useful for developers and other people who look at code or other things that are written in plain text. As you can see, it uses a fixed-width font.

You can also make inline code to add code into other things.

Quote

Here is a quote. What this is should be self explanatory. Quotes are automatically indented when they are used.

Headings

There are six levels of headings. They correspond with the six levels of HTML headings. You've probably noticed them already in the page. Each level down uses one more hash character.

Headings can also contain formatting

They can even contain inline code

Of course, demonstrating what headings look like messes up the structure of the page.

I don't recommend using more than three or four levels of headings here, because, when you're smallest heading isn't too small, and you're largest heading isn't too big, and you want each size up to look noticeably larger and more important, there there are only so many sizes that you can use.

URLs

URLs can be made in a handful of ways:

• A named link to MarkItDown. The easiest way to do these is to select what you want to make a link and hit Ctrl+L.
  
• Another named link to MarkItDown
  
• Sometimes you just want a URL like http://www.markitdown.net/.
  
  

Horizontal rule

A horizontal rule is a line that goes across the middle of the page.

It's sometimes handy for breaking things up.

Images

Markdown can also contain images. I'll need to add something here sometime.

Finally

There's actually a lot more to Markdown than this. See the official introduction and syntax for more information. However, be aware that this is not using the official implementation, and this might work subtly differently in some of the little things.

hmm wait. Ahhh

###hello doesn't work (except for in preview)

hello works? (space after the #)

Not so subtle... added searching within forums, and searching within conversations and events.

Searching forums defaults to a title search. Searching within conversations and events obviously searches the comments of those items.

And yes... I see the form is 1px out.

I think that post up there perfectly illustrates why you need to consider sub-setting the markdown. Far far too much going on visually so the conversation metaphor is completely lost. This is a discussion forum platform, not a word processor. Threads need to flow.

And I reiterate having to learn how to use markdown in order to avoid having it reformat your posts is just wrong. It's as fundamental as a usability issue gets. You want chevrons and stars in your text? They should stay chevrons and stars until you ask for them not to be.

I don't really get your email argument either. Emails are plain text or HTML. There's no in-between.

You chose markdown because you like it. But you're not the market for this product: everybody else is.

Unlike the old forum, we are no longer physically removing images from posts when they exceed 1024px

I get that (although I actually preferred having attachments at the end of the post as thumbnails, rather than having them in line), but I'm not sure why the whole content area is squished into a column only 1170px wide

My Following page has now started to include all kinds of threads that, as far as I can tell, have no relevance to me? They're not threads I've ever posted in or even opened, they're not marked as following, and there is no @mention of me in them.

Only started overnight, as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure why the whole content area is squished into a column only 1170px wide

http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-60 characters per line, including spaces (“Typographie”, E. Ruder). Other sources suggest that up to 75 characters is acceptable. So what’s the downsides of violating this range?

• Too wide – if a line of text is too long the reader’s eyes will have a hard time focusing on the text. This is because the line length makes it difficult to gauge where the line starts and ends. Furthermore it can be difficult to continue onto the correct line in large blocks of text.
  
• Too narrow – if a line is too short the eye will have to travel back too often, breaking the reader’s rhythm. Too short lines also tend to stress readers, making them begin on the next line before finishing the current one (hence skipping potentially important words).
  

We do it for readability.

Extremely long lines of text are significantly harder for people to read, and it gets exponentially harder with every word beyond the optimal range.

We already blow through the optimum, at the widest the forum goes the characters per line on average is around 107. This is because there is a lot of scientific proof that reading on the web is more comfortable with lines around the 80>90cpl (characters per line), and that the downward slope into unreadable text starts around 100cpl becoming unreadable very quickly after 120cpl. So we do push the optimum according to our media, the web, but it remains the case that whilst some people prefer 95+cpl, some hate it, and yet the vast majority find ~75cpl to be extremely enjoyable as a reading experience.

You are obviously quite comfortable with the idea of a cpl above 100, but yet many people find this as slow and unwieldy to read at as 35cpl. Allowing the content to be wider would make the site unreadable for a lot of people.

@mashton was right in that if you do prefer to browse full screen the best experience can be obtained from turning your monitor from landscape to portrait and zooming so that the content fills the entire page and you obtain far more height. At least, I think @mashton said that.

You're following a forum, and the forum has new threads added, and so those are on your Following page.

Unfollow the forum.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks.

Yep, that was me.

I'm enjoying a lot about the new forum, still exploring and getting used to it. Well done @Velocio & @motman on quite an amazing transition, and a really good looking/using new format.

There are a few things that are still bothering me, mentioned and discussed by others, but I'm not sure whether there was any actual action on anything:

• I still don't understand why this is the ONLY website I view that has such large font size. I have read the various links about 'readability' which is fine, but no other website requires individual zooming - which spoils the rest of the format view to me anyway. Having the forum open at work is obvious enough as I can't hide avatars, but now it can be read from 6+ feet away from the desk.
  
• Losing the quoted text in @replies totally prevents any in-thread discussions being followed. I have given up trying to read back to see what the reply was relating to, now it just makes no sense half the time when reading posts in order. As I am picking up the forum here and there rather than following it realtime, it makes for inconsistent reading.
  
• I am getting round the fact that read/unread threads are mixed up in the Following page. I think there was mention of filtering here though.
  
• I've seen mention of the use of code in searches, and in the posts. I have no idea what or where to put any code, so this is not going to come easily.
  
  

Other than those niggles, it has grown on me rapidly, just wish it was a little more use-at-work friendly.

Oh my goodness, I created a list!

the best experience can be obtained from turning your monitor from landscape to portrait

I considered that, but my monitor would need to be be re-hung, and I'd have to manually switch the display format every time I visited LFGSS as my monitor doesn't have an attitude sensor. Also, I already have to turn my phone round to landscape to make the page nav work, I don't need even more irritation in my life :-)

It seemed that highlighting a text to quote doesn't work at all in Firefox 31.0, double check if it's the latest update an' all.

Oh my goodness, I created a list!

Precisely why Markdown is joyous... you meant for a list to exist, and lo it does.

As for the points you raised:

Why is the font size so large?

For readability and also, history.

The default font size used by older forums was 10px, this is from software 14 years old, circa 2000 when vBulletin and phpBB first emerged.

Over the many years between 2000 and 2014, lots of things happened:

• Devices got bigger screens
  
• Devices got much higher dot per inch screens
  
• "Retina" displays and +240DPI (dots per inch) screens emerged
  
  

Back in 2000, 10px was relatively the same size as this is now... it was readable when you sat at a normal distance from a screen.

Back in 2000 the screens were such low quality (low DPI) that to even think of using a serif font for body text was out of the question, and sans-serif fonts ruled... with Arial and then Verdana ruling more than anything else.

The font choice suited the capabilities of the devices and their screens, they focused on low-DPI, low-resolution, bad font hinting, bad font support... they attempted to make text readable given an extremely large number of constraints conspiring to make blocks of text unreadable.

Then, for every year that devices improved, that DPI increased, that screens got larger... the software didn't change, and relatively the fonts appeared smaller.

Over more than a decade people just leaned in closer, squinted harder, and adjusted to miniscule fonts on ever larger and higher resolution screens.

The iPhone "Retina" has been out for 4 years... meaning almost every iPhone and iPod now in use is a high-DPI device.

The Android devices followed quickly, and almost every Android device still in use is a high-DPI device.

Most laptops sold within the last 4 years have an adequate or high DPI. Most monitors sold within the last 4 years have an adequate or high DPI.

All TVs sold in the last 5 years have a higher DPI (HD), newer TVs and monitors are going 4k and even laptops are appearing with super-high DPI screens.

Typography on the web was finally in a place where good looking fonts, at readable sizes could be used.

We may be one of the first forums to use a highly readable font at normal size, but we aren't the first or only website to do so.

All Wordpress ship with default themes using a normal font size that is similar to ours. Wikipedia uses a normal font size (though ugh, they still use sans-serif for massive blocks of body text, stretched as wide as the screen... hundreds of characters per line). News sites like The Guardian, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal all use normal font sizes for their body text and comments.

In fact, we're quite far behind the curve on returning to a normal font size. Yes, we're way ahead of other fora software, but we're behind nearly all blogs, news sites, information sites.

Lost context when quoting

I do agree with this, but I need to make a safe way to allow quoting. If I give you the raw Markdown of the quoted post it opens up a security risk, and if I give you the HTML we produce it's complex babble to read and edit.

I'm going to look at using a JavaScript HTML to Markdown converter that would allow me to quote a post, and convert the safe HTML back into Markdown that could be put into a post and be quoted, chopped up, etc.

Searches and code

It's not code, they are just keywords and options. Just like Google allow you to search by site site:lfgss.com, by file type filetype:pdf and by various other options. So we allow your search to be further specified to your needs.

You can restrict a search to a forum forumId:531 or by who authored some comment or content authorId:47686, or you can find just events type:event.

Not that you need to memorise these things, late last night I added the search forms in the right hand bar for search just a single forum (it adds the forumId for you and sets reasonable defaults to make search easy), and for searching within conversations and events.

But if you want to do some really crazy searches beyond the capability of the convenient forms, if you want to "Find all posts made by Bob between January and March, within the Current Projects forum, in which he mentioned Demon Bikeworks"... then you can, because we have provided support for all of the options and more.

We chose to do it this way, because the approach other fora have taken doesn't really work well when the forum gets big and complex, and when you start adding other types of content.

vBulletin has:

• A search form
  
• An advanced search form
  
• A profile search form
  
• A private message search form
  
• A thread search form
  
• A forum search form
  
  

Crazily, they all do different things and show the results in different ways, and they're a confusing mess.

XenForo is a more recent forum software provider, and yet they still have 4 main search forms (all different in functionality), and a separate private message search.

We just have one search form. It searches everything. Whereas others have built a search form for every type of thing, we built a Google search for forums.

Yes it's different from what forums have used to date, but we really feel it's better in so many ways. You won't have to memorise "code", but we will show and allow you to edit all of the keywords that a seach uses.

@Velocio Much appreciating the time you are giving to all your responses, you have the patience of a saint!

I get the coding thing - it's tidy and will work nicely. I may make myself a little crib sheet.

The list was a good surprise - had to edit though as the last line was not supposed to be part of the last list element.

While I understand the font history, readability, etc - and I just had another look at a handful of random Wordpress blogs, The Guardian and Wikipedia - but the fonts are all smaller than this site (I am by no means being scientific, purely subjective). Wordpress does appear to have similar white space ratio but with a smaller font.

I don't understand why all of a sudden the internet seems to want to have everyone able to read a page from 3 x arms length. Humans haven't changed that much in so many years? Maybe in the last 20 years, those that can make change happen online are in denial over their increasing need of reading glasses?

I don't understand why all of a sudden the internet seems to want to have everyone able to read a page from 3 x arms length. Humans haven't changed that much in so many years? Maybe in the last 20 years, those that can make change happen online are in denial over their increasing need of reading glasses?

We all want our sites to be highly readable.

The gold standard for this is a quality printed book, that you can read at arms length in a relaxed posture and without getting a headache.

It's the right number of characters per line (~75), the right breathing space between lines (~1.5 ratio between font size and line height), the right font for the content (Palatino for legal, Helvetica for headers, custom fonts like ours for body text), a high contrast between the font colour and background, etc.

If we want a wide reading area, then the characters per line increases, and so the font size increases to bring the CPL back down to within the optimal range, etc.

It's a balancing game to make the web as readable and accessible as a book.

The font size I've chosen is sublime on mobile and tablets, yet offers a good balance on large screens.

The weakness is presently with smaller laptop screens and monitors (the 1280 pixels wide by 800 pixels high, netbooks and older cheap work monitors). This affects some ~9% of users, but that % has been decreasing for a long while now as older equipment has been replaced by newer.

The 2 most popular screen sizes are now 1366 pixels wide (newer netbooks, 11" Mac Air, etc), and 1920 pixels wide. The most popular mobiles are all high DPI devices that now look really nice (excluding Opera Mini and Firefox on Android which do their best to be clunky).

All that said... what browser are you using? Firefox allows you to declare what font size you want to be applied to a site, and Chrome permits this via an add-on. I think that IE also offers this but I don't have one to hand (the IE machine is at home).

Re: search "code", I really think that the use of ids for fora and profiles and threads is off putting. How easy would it be to use full names with auto completion pop up lists, à la a programming IDE?

I.e: I type "forum:r" and it suggests all fora that begin with "r". I pick one and it auto completes to "forum:rides and races" (probably in quotes to sort out spaces).

I'm sure stuff like that will happen, get the engine running first then sort out the paintwork.

#caranalogyonbikeforum

We don't yet have the autocomplete for forum names available. And we don't have autocomplete for conversations, etc either (and there would be so much duplication for things like "For Sale: Leader frame" that it would be unusable).

For profile names that's a different thing. We should do that and will at some point. Is it the highest priority right now? Probably not (in fact I determined not this morning). So this is something we'll do later.

Moar bug fixes first... and putting some nav down the bottom of the screen.

Totally grok the priority issue. Just happy to feed ideas toward a backlog.

@Velocio I am using Chrome (illicitly installed, not sure how it gets through our work lockdown on installing anything, but I managed to install it). I have 2 adjacent, landscape monitors, 1920 x 1200. The only way I can see to reduce the font is ctrl+mousewheel - but I don't have to do this on any other website? That's the bit I simply don't get. What is the add in?

I can use IE9, but it won't store logins, etc (lockdown), and I don't like it much anyway.

Reducing font size via zoom is fine, and if you set this outside of incognito Chrome should remember the preference even when you're in incognito.

And I believe that @Drakien is using Minimalist for Chrome to re-style things to his liking: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/252974/