alt Hacker NewsSomething I’d like to see in browsers is native support for text/markdown and text/gemini.
If browsers can decide to render PDFs, surely a simple formatter and user-decidable stylesheets for markdown/gemini content can’t be that hard to ship.
As it stands you can write a text/plain blog but you will be hurt with SEO concerns since it isn’t really hypertext (maybe you could do some magic with link headers). Supporting other formats lowers the barrier to publishing in a neat manner and gives control back to users.
> Something I’d like to see in browsers is native support for text/markdown [...]
Sadly, I can see why it's unlikely that we'd get this.
First, browsers would need to agree on which flavor of Markdown, what extensions, and so on. After all, Markdown is almost like the CSV of text formats, with everyone doing their own thing ("almost" because you can still assume that some basic things work as you'd expect).
Only with that, I can already see the backlash no matter what they choose to do here. Too minimal, and get complains about not being too useful. Choose some extensions, get complains about being bloated. Make any attempt to have a thoughtful discussion about pros and cons (short and long term), get shut down with "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".
If we can get past that and finally agree on one specific set of features, there's still the question of whether it's actually worth it or not. The difference between Markdown and PDF is that reading PDFs directly in the browser is a common enough activity, but reading Markdown directly is only going to benefit the tiny audience of the small percentage of software devs that exist in the world, and maybe 5 weird people. Everyone else with a blog would just use the WYSIWYG from their CMS.
That's why I wouldn't be surprised if I don't see native Markdown rendering during my lifetime.