My Favourite DevForums Improvements

Yesterday’s DevForums release includes a raft of features and fixes. For information on the major new features, see the official announcement. However, there’s also a lot of ‘quality of life’ improvements, and this post highlights some of my favourites.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

In addition to uploading images, you can now upload a log file. To do this, click on the attachments button (the paperclip icon) and then click on Add File. Perfect for crash reports!

(r. 77985758)

The editor now has an Inline Code button that adds backticks around the selected text. This makes it easier for folks who aren’t familiar with Markdown to craft nicer-looking posts.

(r. 63494072)

The Markdown parser now allows styles within a link’s text. For example, this text:

See [the _fabulous_ `NSWorkspace` documentation](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsworkspace).

now renders with the fabulous in italics and the NSWorkspace in code style.

(r. 63496455)

You can now use both _text_ and *text* to get italics.

(r. 64507223)

The Markdown parser is no longer confused by markup characters in the middle of your text. So, for example, you can now write C++ and C# and they will render correctly. Similarly, you can write CF_RETURNS_RETAINED without the the RETURNS being italicised.

(r. 64879262, 64929174)

And if you do encounter a situation where the parser treats your text as markup, you can now escape it. For example, \[1\] now renders correctly as [1].

(r. 63416670)

You can now include a second paragraph in a list item. Consider this example:

1. First varnish the waffles.

    **IMPORTANT** Varnishing waffles must be done in a well ventilator area.

2. Then eat!

In standard Markdown the IMPORTANT paragraph is attached to the first item in the list, and DevForums now renders it that way.

This isn’t restricted to text; it’ll also work with code listings, which is super useful when you’re describing a multi-step process where some steps include small code snippets.

(r. 63418130, 63415884)

Links containing parentheses now work. For example, you can now link to the Wikipedia > Service set (802.11 network) page.

(r. 77819623)

The Markdown parser now supports out-of-line links. For example, you can ‘spell’ the previous link as:

link to the [Wikipedia > Service set (802.11 network)][refSs81n] page

[refSs81n]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_set_(802.11_network)>

Personally I prefer this style because I find that the long links get in my way while crafting my text.

(r. 63416473)