Rated 2 out of 5 stars

by pzkpfw on May 20, 2022 · permalink

While I applaud the initiative of reviving the "Markdown Here" add-on, this doesn't do it for me:

- The author spams github issues for the old project referring to this one, when the scope of the two are completely different: this one only works for Thunderbird while the now abandoned project was targeted towards multiple browser and web based e-mail clients. I consider it dishonest and disruptive to use this way of "marketing" your project when it does not in fact replace the old project aside from a very specific subset of users (Thunderbird). Replying to an issue specific to Office 365 or Gmail on the web with "use markdown here revival instead" is nonsensical, because many people that use it do so because they have to (e.g. enterprise requirements forcing web based e-mail clients).

- Markdown rendering in e-mails look awful compared to "Markdown Here". While the "old" add-on used a pretty subtle "bootstrap" kind of styling for all elements, this add-on uses darker grays for monospaced inline text, and the table styling is horrendous with dark blue headers and dark grey alternating rows. Why this was chosen instead of the nowadays pretty standard "bootstrap" styling I have no idea.

The only reason I'm not giving this one star is because the language syntax highlighting for code is a neat feature that I can use for private e-mails, but since I can't use the addon at all for work it's been a complete waste of time for me following the probably well-meant referral to use this instead.

So in summary:

1. It's in my mind a just barely useful add-on even if you exclusively use Thunderbird due to styling deviations from "Markdown Here" which makes e-mails with tables or inline monospaced text look really bad.

2. It's being marketed as a "Markdown Here" replacement when it's nowhere near functional parity.