The web was initially ~designed~ for writers. Styling, links, paragraphs, titles (at all levels). The ability to edit. No character limits. That’s what we had to work with when we started blogging in the mid-late 90s.
I use two different editors for writing; Tot and Bear. I write 99% of my blog posts on my iPhone and when I do use a Mac I use Bear because it could very well be the best editor for writing for the web I’ve ever used.
I use both of these applications because they give me a really nice, easy to use, writing environment.
Tot
In Tot I use straight text and add Markdown by hand. I just prefer it that way. It’s a very straightforward editor that also saves instantly. I can view my post on my Mac, iPhone, or iPad by opening Tot from any of those devices. Tot syncs it with my iCloud account. Simple, simple, simple.
Bear
On the Mac with Bear I use the full Markdown support provided by the editor. Why’s that? Well it has darned good support for copying plain text once I’ve finished writing so I can use Micro.blog to publish my completed post.
One of my favorite features is keyboard shortcuts. If I want to insert a quote I just press Shift+Command+T and I have a Markdown quote. If I want to paste a link, this is easily my favorite feature, I just select the text I want the link on and paste my link. The Bear editor handles setting up the Markdown link. It doesn’t replace what’s there. It knows I have a link to paste and does the right thing!
The only thing I really need is a publish button — with keyboard shortcut — to publish my post to Micro.blog and any connectors to allow me to view the posts I have there. I can’t do that with Bear as far as I’m aware. It’s just an amazing blog post editor. It’s so good I wish I could embed it into any existing blogging tools, like Red Sweater’s incredible MarsEdit. That would make for the ultimate blogging tool in my opinion.