Changelog.md

What's new in Markdown Monster

4.3

Not released yet

• Improved Preview Syncing
  We've revamped the preview syncing mechanism to better sync the preview page position closer to the the editor's current cursor position during editing, clicking into and selecting text. For scroll operations, the preview is synced at the top of the page to the top of the editor. Updated again in v4.2.6+. (#1264)

• Editor and Preview Performance Improvements for Multi-Megabyte Documents
  We made some optimizations around the preview refresh mechanism that helps reduce latency when running with large multi-megabyte documents. This helps especially with files in the 2 to 4mb+ which can be edited comfortably on mid-range+ hardware, and up to 8-10mb range which work with some stuttering.

• Update AI Image Generator for better Gpt-Image Support
  Fixed support for newer iterations of OpenAI gpt-image-1.5 model and reset defaults to use this model from Dall-E-3 which is being retired. Several fixes including error handling and improved switch over of stored images to newer models (gpt-image-1).

• Folder Browser: Directory ToolTip now shows Directory Info
  When hovering over a folder in the Folder Browser you now see a summary of detail about the folder: Number of folders and files and total size.

• Fix: Slow Document Outline View on Large Documents
  When working with very large documents with many sections the document outline became very, very slow. By changing the rendering template mode performance improved by at least 10x - it was a huge bottleneck. The document outline was the main reason for very laggy performance for larger documents and with the fix we can now handle much larger documents with decent performance. Combined with the preview sync enhancements large document editor performance is drastically improved.

• Fix: Preview BasePath breaks Relative Links
  Fixed issue where the base path generated for the preview document generated a path to the full document's filename instead of the parent folder. The base path ensures that relative resources can be found, but because of filename as part of the path, the base path was effectively broken. Fixed. #1273

• Fix: Editor Zoom now Re-centers the Editor on Selected Line
  When changing the editor zoom level via the drop down on the bottom the editor re-centers the selected line. Previously the line selection was left unchanged which often scrolled off the selected line and left it still selected but not actually visible.

• Fix: Editor Find Popup Shift-Tab Key Focus
  Fixed issue where the cursor would expand Shift-Tab in the editor when pressed from the search and search and replace popup window. Both tab and shift-tab now keep focus in the popup properly and toggle between the two fields (search and replace) or stay focused on the current control (search only). (#1271)

• Fix: Ctrl-F in File Browser and File Navigation
  Fixed missing Ctrl-F hotkey in the file browser that jumps the Search box to provide a file search string. Fixed keyboard navigation in the Folder browser where keystrokes in the tree jump to nearest file on the current level match based on the current filter string.

4.2

March 9th, 2026

• Improved Image Refresh in Preview
  Improve image refresh if images are updated outside of MM. Various Refresh Browser options now hard refresh and clear the cache explicitly to force the preview browser to update images immediately when performing image related operations (browser context menu and edit menu and clipboard paste and drag and drop operations). The explicit image refresh now also explicitly clears the cache for when images are updated without any explicit image updates in the UI, but it still requires a manual operation (ie. Hard Browser Refresh)

• Improved MathML Handling in Preview
  The preview browser now properly renders MathML expressions immediately when added to the page, compared to the prior behavior that required reloading the page on first insert to get the library loaded. The page now detects the missing math library on dynamic preview updates when required and automatically does a full page reload immediately.

• Add Open Documents and Project Files to Command Palette
  When you search using the Command Palette (ctrl-shift-p), the search result now includes a list of open documents (title and filename displayed), and a list of matching files based on the project base path file tree (filename and folder displayed). These new items are displayed on the bottom of the results list. This effectively gives you a quick way to search and open/activate files that are either open or in the file system in the project's (or current and down) path.
  Note that you can establish a project base folder via marker files

• Go To Line in the Editor
  Added Go To Line to the edit menu and via ctrl-g. Surprisingly this has been a missing feature. Also available in the Command Palette.

• Add WordPress API Weblog Publishing
  We've supported WordPress XML-RPC publishing since the beginning but we've now added support for the more modern REST API publishing. No changes to overall behaviors, but using the currently recommended architecture instead. Handles both self-hosted and WordPress published sites.

• Improved Git Undo Change Handling
  Added separate options for Undoing and Deleting currently selected file or all checked files. Also you can now Revert all changes in the repo with a single button. Previously only single file operations where supported. Related: Fix Undo bug that in some cases was not actually discarding changes.

• Weblog Publishing: Generate AI Abstract from Document
  The Weblog publishing dialog now has an AI Generate Abstract button (if an AI provider is configured) to generate a single paragraph abstract from the document.

• Fix: Format and Edit Table when there's White Space Before
  Fix issue when a table that is to be formatted or edited has white space in front of it, for example in a list that results in an list level indent. Previously table was inserted into column zero. This fix maintains the spacing based on the first line of the table. (#1260)

• Fix: Configuration Help Text Formatting
  Fix the documentation XML Docs import to properly handle leading spaces in help content. Fixes the misaligned first line regression bug introduced in updated object structure parsing. Related fix: Improved performance of the configuration screen initial display by eliminating excessive exceptions.

• Fix: AI Chat Interface Cancel Operation
  Canceling an in-flight chat request now properly updates the UI and hides the spinning ball and displays a cancel message in the response view.

• Fix: Open in New Window With Untitled Documents
  Fix bug where attempting to open in new window fails with untitled documents and loses the unsaved untitled document text if the file isn't saved when prompted. Fixed by not saving the file and opening the file in memory in the new editor - ie. in the same untitled/unsaved mode as in the previous editor. Also fixed various activation issues around this feature in the various avenues that access this feature (editor, tab, window menu). (#1262)

• Fix: Editor Text Scaling
  Fix the percentage drop down to accurately reflect the editor scale size as set via scroll wheel or Ctrl-+/- and by selecting values from the dropdown. Previously the dropdown was not reflecting the updated value and was affecting the font size resulting in the numbers not accurately reflecting the actual scale value. Fixed.

4.1

January 21st, 2026

• Emoji Selector as a Sidebar Tab
  Moved the Emoji Picker to a left sidebar tab that is always active and more easily accessible. Toolbar access and ctrl-j still work too, but they now activate the sidebar. Also improved initial load time of the panel. Tab on the default search box prompt switches focus back into the editor.

• Sidebar Panel Activation Visual Notification
  For many sidebar operations that focus on sidebar panels (Emoji, Search in Files, Bookmarks) the sidebar is now briefly visually highlighted to point attention to the new tool context.

• Allow Setting the List Symbol via Settings (* or -)
  A new ListBulletSymbol setting has been added to specify how lists are generated. Default is * but you can also use the alternate - character. Applies to built-in list operations off selections and the Paste Html as Markdown Edit menu option.

• Updated: Print PDF Font Configuration
  Tweaked default print/PDF fonts to use standard system base fonts rather than a mix of explicit platform specific fonts and emoji fonts. The explicit use of Emoji fonts was causing issues with some characters not printing correctly. With the new Chromium print engine instead of wkhtml2pdf, Chromium now automatically handles symbol and emoji font fall backs.
  If you've created your own custom themes, check your font usage and match to the default themes.

• Add additional AI Cloud Providers in Configuration Templates
  Added additional cloud provider templates for quick setup with BYOK setups. Added: Ollama Cloud, Gemini, Mistral and Perplexity APIs.

• Changed AI Icon on Toolbar
  After several suggestions that it was hard to find the AI Chat feature, the toolbar icon has been changed to the more standard sparkle wand that typically identifies AI features. 😄

• AI Operations are now available in the Command Palette
  You can now access most AI features and configuration via the Command Palette (ctrl-shift-p). Type your AI operation and select from the dropdown for quick access. Also remember ctrl-shift-a to bring up the AI context menu quickly as well as the dropdown next to the AI magic wand icon.

• Cleanup Selection AI Editor Operation
  Changed the existing AI based Fix Grammar menu option to Cleanup Selection. Refactored Diff UI to display merged output in syntax colored editor view in dialog. Updated the cleanup system prompt and allow for customizing the system prompt in the dialog.

• Fix: \\.\null Device Failure in Folder Browser
  Some users have been seeing null device failures in the folder browser due to potentially invalid sym-links in folder listings. We now filter out devices that are unable to retrieve attributes (devices typically).

• Fix: Folder Browser not showing Folders
  Regression bug that caused folders not to display in the Folder Browser, only files. Fixed (Support)

• Fix: AI Image Generation Connection Issues
  Fix issues accessing Azure via the OpenAI Image Generations API. Switch to new OpenAI compatibility URLs that are consistent with OpenAI syntax instead of Azure‑specific URL syntax and header formats.
  Breaking Change: The URL template for image generation has changed to {0}\openai\v1\{1}

• Fix: Document Outline not updating when Preview is not visible
  Fix document outline handling in scenarios where the preview is not visible. Since the document outline is tied to the preview's fixed order, it checks for document outline update routines.
  (#1245)

• Fix: Format/Edit Table replaces strips trailing Linefeed
  Fixed issue where the trailing line feed was eaten when formatting and in some cases pasting a table from the table editor. Changed selection behavior to not leave table selected. (#1258)

• Fix: Slow Rendering for Settings Dialog
  Fixed a performance bug that was unnecessarily throwing captured exceptions for many property types, slowing down rendering of the Settings UI, especially with filters.

Breaking Changes

• AI Image Generation Azure Url Template Changes Required
  The Azure Image Generation Url Template has changed to {0}\openai\v1\{1} for direct OpenAi compatibility. Older connections might fail, unless the template is updated. You can either fix the template or create a new Azure image connection which now uses the new template.

4.0.1

official 4.0 release - December 3rd, 2025

• Integrated LLM Chat Interface
  There's a new Chat Interface accessible from the AI toolbar and context menu (ctrl-shift-a) that lets you work against your local documents. Create summaries, clean up your writing, ask for suggestions etc. By default the active document is provided as context, but you can add additional files or open documents. Uses Bring your own Api Keys* for LLM access.

• Add Image Pasting and Drag and Drop to Chat Interface
  You can now drag images from a browser, from Explorer or paste images from the clipboard into the Chat UI prompt interface and provide image data to any prompt.
  Note: this feature depends on the model supporting image inputs. Most major online models support multi-modal inputs, but many small local models do not.

• Update to .NET 10 Runtime
  Updated to the latest RC release of the .NET Runtime for v4 release cycle. Installer installs the RC runtime for the preview. We'll switch to RTM release as soon as it becomes available later in November.

• Markdown Inline Python and C/C++Syntax Highlighting
  Python and C/C++ are now supported as inline, syntax colored language code snippets in the Markdown editor in addition to various others: C#, Powershell, Json, JavaScript, Html, Css, Xml and a few others. Not all editor languages are supported to keep the Markdown parser fast, but Python and C++ seem to be very popular in our user base.

• Support for Mermaid Files and Syntax Highlighting for Inline Mermaid
  You can now open and create Mermaid .mmd files. Mermaid files are self-contained files that contain a single Mermaid diagram. These have become popular for sharing graphs and also are common for use with LLMs as input and output. Limited Syntax highlighting is now provided for both mermaid files and inline mermaid snippets.

• Support for Font Ligatures
  If you choose a font that supports ligatures like Hasklig or Fira Code it will automatically display with ligatures enabled. Thanks to the ACE Editor folks for this update.

• Save Untitled Documents when closing
  Untitled documents are now preserved on disk when closing Markdown Monster, and re-opened when you restart MM. They are treated as all other open documents and re-opened up to the max Remembered Last Document count (Remember Number of Last Documents setting). Untitled documents are closed only when explicitly closed, saved to a new filename or when overrunning Remembered Document Count. Untitled documents are stored in %localappdata%\Markdown Monster\Sessions folder until either saved explicitly or closed.

• Untitled Document Tab and Title Naming
  As part of the updated handling for untitled documents that are now preserved across MM sessions, the headers for both tabs and the window are now updated with the title of the text if it can be determined (first h1 element in document). If you run more than a single untitled tab this will be useful to keep them distinguished and easily identifiable.

• Improved Preview Rendering of Html Documents in Editor
  Html documents now support both full Html documents as well as Html Fragments. Previous unsupported, Html fragments (ie. no <html> header) now render using MM preview templates and styling. Additionally both modes now attempt to set the <base> path to allow for pulling in relative path dependencies. (#1239)

• Remember Preview Zoom Setting
  The preview Zoom setting now has a dedicated dropdown on the status bar and that shows the remembered zoom percentage across MM sessions. The setting applies to all preview/document instances and can be controlled with Ctl+/- or Ctrl-Scrollwheel or using the drop down.

• Allow Document Print Scaling for Save As Pdf
  You can now optionally specify a scale factor to print output that is generated to Pdf using the Save As Pdf dialog. A common scenario is to use a lower scaling percentage resulting in effectively smaller print size to fit more content onto pages. Allowed values are from 20% to 200%. (#1242)

• Drag and Drop into Favorites from Windows Explorer
  You can now drag and drop files and folders into Favorites from Windows Explorer.

• External Preview: Configuration in Window Control Box
  Window docking and activation status is now displayed in the top control box of the external preview window, rather than on the status bar which provides a few more pixels for viewable display surface for content.

• Editor Theme Extension Support
  Changed how editor themes can be extended via editor-user-extensions.css and editor-user-extensions.js in <commonFolder>\Markdown Monster\EditorThemes. These files were supported before but lived the install folder which has as of recent versions been wiped out on new installs. This moves the extensions to a preserved location in the common configuration folder.

• Preview Theme ScriptFolder Template Var
  Preview themes have been updated with a script folder variable both to simplify Preview Theme templates and to provide an easier path to create extension themes that are stored in <commonfolder\Markdown Monster\PreviewThemes. Previously the scripts folder had to be copied from the main install - the new {$scriptPath} variable in Theme.html explicitly points to the script location in the Markdown Monster install folder. The old {$themePath}..\scripts\ path syntax continues to work the same as before.

• Table Editor: Create Compact Pipe Table
  When generating output from the Table Editor you now have an option to create compact Pipe Table output that strips all white space for minimal character usage that is nevertheless valid. Also an option on the Editor Context menu inside of pipe tables to compact existing tables without opening the editor first. Useful for providing documents to LLMs and saving some $$ on token usage. ( #1241

• Folder Browser: Image Preview on Image Files
  Image files now display the image as large thumbnail in the tooltip when hovering over a file. As before image dimensions and DPI is also displayed.

• Favorites: Cleaner and Tighter Favorites List
  Change the layout of the Favorites list to not display folder names of items to allow for greater favorites density. To provide more info there's now a tool tip like the folder browser to view file information to resolve ambivalent file name displays.

• Favorites: Explicit Folder Selection for Favorites
  When creating a Favorite manually you can now choose to explicitly select a folder with a separate folder selection dialog. Previously you couldn't only pick a file and would have to remove the filename or type in the folder name directly.

• Table Editor: ESC to Cancel Changes and Prompt
  You can now exit the table editor with ESC to abort changes. Additionally there's a new dialog that prompts on whether to embed changes, discard changes or go back to the table editor for all cancel operations. (#1226)

• Table Editor: Add Export To Json and CSV
  You can now export the active table to Json or CSV output either on the clipboard or to a saved file. (#1085)

• Fix: Table Editor Changes in active edit area not saved
  Fixed issue where changes in the current edit field were not always saved if control focus was not lost. Related to hot-key exits via ctrl-enter and esc which could result in missing changes or not detecting changes on canceling. Fixed. (#1226)

• Fix: Mermaid Diagrams require a leading empty Line
  Fix issue where Mermaid diagrams required a blank line prior to the Mermaid block to render properly. Previously not having the line would break the Mermaid renderer (bomb display). Fixed now by properly rendering the leading line break into the generated mermaid block. (#1219)

• Fix: Items duplicating when using Drag and Drop Favorite List
  When dragging and dropping items within the Favorites list, items were duplicating in many situations. Items now properly move to the new location. Note that copy operation is not supported internally - only Move.

• Fix: Link Checker MisReporting UrlEncoded File Links
  Fixed issue where the link checker would mark linked file references that contain spaces and other Url Encoded characters as not found.

• Fix: Line Number in CommandLine not always working
  Fixed issue where line number parsing using the --line command line or the :line file postfix was not always moving the cursor to the specified line.

3.11

November 4th, 2025

• Last v3.x Release
  This is the last v3 release before v4 will be released.

3.9

August 8th, 2025

• RegEx Searches now can match Line Breaks, Tabs etc.
  After a recent update to ACE Editor the editor now supports \n and other escape sequences in the editor for RegEx searches. Previously ACE Editor did not support this functionality. A big thanks to the folks at ACE for finally addressing this! (#1214)

• Better Menu Accelerator Handling
  MM's Accelerator handling out of the editor has been sub-optimal up to now due to some focus limitations. This issues has been addressed via some new WebView features that better handle accelerator key forwarding. This means pressing menu key combinations (ie. Alt-W for the Window menu) now properly activates the main menu and sets focus to the menu allowing for menu keyboard shortcut navigation (ie. alt-w-l to close all windows) to work as expected.

• Emojis are now embedded as Emoji Font or Markdown Text
  There's a new option in the Emoji picker window that lets you choose between embedding emojis either as the actual emoji character or as the Markdown text representation. The latter was the previous behavior. The value set is sticky and remembered as part of the configuration.

• Emoji Window is now non-modal and can stay open
  For those of you that are heavy Emoji users, you can now use the emoji window to insert multiple emoji, as well as leaving the window open for quicker access. The window always injects at the current active editor location.

• Fix: Edit Preview Theme Folder Opening
  Fix issue where Edit Preview Theme from Preview Context menu was opening the PreviewThemes folder instead of currently active theme for pre-installed themes. While that now works, remember that installed themes should not be modified in place, but rather be copied to the %appdata%\Markdown Monster\PreviewThemes folder as a new theme which can be customized and won't be overwritten by Markdown Monster updates.

• Fix: Sidebar Activation Menu Options
  Fix menu link and commands for activating various sidebar panels. Fixed regression after implementing split side bar panels.

• Fix: Command Line Opening of Relative Path Files
  Fix a regression bug for files opened out of a folder via relative path not resolving properly.

• Fix: Startup Line Numbers off by One
  Fixed issue where the line number on recent documents was one line short of the actual previous line number. Also changed the internal goto line behavior to not scroll but just set to avoid the occasional jumping cursor related to manual line movement.

• Fix: Blank Editor Document on Startup
  Fixed issue where occasionally an document would load with no content especially when many documents were opened on startup. (#1216)

• Fix: Opening Multiple Files From Explorer
  Fix timing issue that failed to open multiple files from Explorer and would often load the last document blank. (#1216)

• Fix: DocFx Expansion in Code Blocks
  Fix issue where DocFx expressions in code blocks would expand as rendered DocFx. Fixed. (#1217)

3.8

June 11th, 2025

• AI Editor Text Autosuggestion (ghost text)
  If you have an AI API key configured, there's now support for auto-suggestions based on context of your current document by pressing Ctrl-Space. Auto suggestions suggest and display ghost text based on the active document and current cursor position context. Press Tab to accept or any other key to dismiss.

• AI Context Menu Shortcut
  The AI context menu now has a Ctrl-Shift-A shortcut key to pop up at the current cursor position for quick keyboard only activation.

• Header Formatting Improvements
  Headers (H1, H2, H3 etc.) can now be toggled and switched easily using the toolbar options or the Ctrl-1 through 5 shortcuts.

• Customized Preview Theme Folder in Common Folder
  Customized Preview themes can now be stored in the Markdown Monster common folder (%appdata%\Markdown Monster\PreviewThemes by default). This helps separate your custom themes from the built-in themes. This also fixes a bug introduced in recent releases where the Install folder is completely nuked and re-installed from scratch wiping out any custom Preview Themes.

• Mermaid Rendering Configuration
  You can now specify one of Mermaid's default display themes in the MM configuration via the Markdown.MermaidTheme configuration value. You can now also create a custom Mermaid Initializer that allows you to customize Mermaid options including custom theming, addins, security settings and more.

• Add Azure DevOps Mermaid Syntax Support
  Azure DevOps uses slightly different Mermaid syntax than GitHub and most other Markdown environments by using :::mermaid instead of ```mermaid. The AOD syntax now works for mermaid diagrams as well.

• Add support UseSoftlineBreakAsHardlineBreak
  Add option to toggle soft linebreak behavior for linebreaks in existing files. If true this flag renders soft line breaks as hard line breaks in the Previewer. By default soft line breaks that don't use explicit Markdown formatting (ie. two spaces or \) are rendered as a space. With this option on these are rendered as hard line breaks (<br/>). (#1200)

• gpt-image-1 Model Support for AI Image generation
  Added support for the newer gpt-based OpenAI image models which allow for richer prompt evaluation and more details to be included and rendered in images. You can dynamically switch between dall-e-3 and gpt-image-1 models with appropriate settings exposed for each.
  Note: gpt-image-1 is significantly more expensive than dall-e-3.

• GitHub Models added to default AI Model Configuration
  GitHub models is now an option for AI configuration with preset values for the endpoint and model config. GitHub models are free for limited usage, but you need to set up a personal access token to use it.

• Changed Voice Dictation
  Change original voice implementation to using native Windows Voice Dictation features which can now be triggered through the F4 hotkey. While this updated voice dictation implementation is not quite as integrated as the original implementation, it provides vastly improved dictation capture, with automatic punctuation detection and better word and sentence detection and auto stop and complete sentence handling etc. By doing so we were also able to drop the burdensome dependency on the Windows SDK which brought on large size gain as well as major hassles for Addin dependencies. The new implementation also works on Arm64 - the old one didn't.

• Improved Arm64 Installation
  Fixed issue where Arm64 installations would under some circumstances not properly install the arm64 executable (which is significantly faster than running x64 in emulation). Added a pre-install checker and main exe swapper to ensure that the arm64 exe is installed as the default executable. All installations now include the base MarkdownMonster.exe and MarkdownMonsterArm64.exe which allows for portable installs to run the explicit arm64 executable (or you can manually rename).

• AI Menu Shortcut (ctrl-shift-a)
  There's now a menu shortcut to get to the AI features menu without a mouse. The context menu pops up at the current cursor position and is focused for keyboard navigation.

• Fix: Left Sidebar Panel Collapsing to Invisible
  Fixed issue where the bottom sidebar panel would collapse and become invisible. Fixed by forcing a minimum size.

• Fix: Drop Favorites on empty Control Area
  Fix issue where dropping a tab onto the Favorites panel when there aren't any items, or when dropping into the empty space of the list would do nothing. We now add the item to the root of the Favorites list.

• Fix: Command Line Startup with Line Number
  Fix issue where loading with line numbers sometimes didn't work due to a race condition. Fixed the race condition and also fixed support for file.txt:10 line number syntax including support for quoted strings.

• Fix: Remove Link Dialog Files file:/// Prefix
  Fix link dialog when embedding local files that are not relatively pathed using file:/// scheme. The scheme is unnecessary and is no longer applied resulting in cleaner absolute file links. Also when embedding files the file extension is stripped from the default link text. (similar to the way dropped files are handled)

• Fix: Link Checker Root Path
  The link checker now respects the 'project' root path as defined by a Markdown Monster project file, or a .markdownmonster file, or files .docmonster or .docs.json extensions.

• Fix: Remove Markdown Extra Linefeed
  Fix issue where using Remove Markdown (ctrl-shift-z) added a linefeed. Fixed.

3.7

April 3rd, 2025

• Support for Voice Dictation (Preview)
  You can now enable voice dictation by setting the EnableVoiceDictation configuration setting. Once set you can press F4(or configure another key). Text is captured in real time and inserted directly into the editor as you speak using the native Windows Dictation feature. To stop press any key. An optional 'Cleanup Dictated Text' feature can be used to clean up punctuation, spelling and grammar of dictated and selected text although the native capture tends to be very good about automatically adding punctuation and sentence breaks.

• Improved External Preview Browser UI
  Improve start up speed and UI jankiness when using the external previewer, especially when starting up MM in external view mode or switching from internal to external modes. Adjust Window positioning with tighter separation. Fix sizing and docking to main window issues.

• Improved List Handling via Configuration.Editor.EnableListAutoCompletion
  Updated automatic List auto completion for bullet and numbered lists. Tab now increases or decreases the indentation level, and automatically renumbers numbered lists. (#1180)

• Image Dialog Adds Option for Save as Project Relative Path
  You can now specify that the path generated from a Image Paste operation from the clipboard (or loaded into the preview editor) is linked with a project relative path, rather than a document relative which is used by default. Project Paths can be 'marked' as a project root via several different marker or project files.

• DeepSeek AI Connection Configuration
  Added DeepSeek AI connection default for using the DeepSeek AI for various AI operations (Summary, Grammar, Translation).

• Favorites now Highlight Missing Files
  If you have files or folders stored in your favorites, resources that are missing are now flagged so you can easily see that there's a problem and so you can edit and fix the favorite quickly.

• Better Mousewheel & Touchpad Scrolling
  Added better support for adjusting scroll speed both in the editor and the various sidebar lists like the Folder Browser, Document View and Link Checker. You can now set the Editor.ScrollSpeed and FolderBrowser.ListScrollSpeed settings to scroll behavior. The default WPF behavior was very unfriendly to touchpad operation as it was too fast. The new default uses explicit scroll speed for the lists that makes them work better with touchpads and sensitive clutchless scrollwheels, and allows for explicit adjustment.

• Open in External Editor
  Added a Open in External Editor editor option the tab, editor and file browser context menus. This option lets you open the selected file or open document and open it in another editor that you can configure. A new configuration option lets you configure the External text editor. The setting is ExternalEditorPath and it defaults to VS Code, Notepad++ or Notepad if installed. You can change the default in Tools->Settings.
  Reminder Note: You can also add any number of External Programs to edit/display various types of files like text and images and have it show on the context menu.

• Installer completely clears Install Folder on Updates
  The installer now completely nukes the Markdown Monster install folder to ensure that any old left over files are cleared out. Previously it was possible that - especially across many version updates - there could be left over files that would interfere with versioning. Now every install starts from a clean slate.
  Note: this affects only the Installation folder, which does not and should not contain any updatable files.

• Syntax Support: Lua and LaTex
  Add explicit support for Lua and Latex both in the editor and the previewer for syntax highlighting.

• List Item (ctrl-l) Now Toggles
  List items can now be toggled between list prefix and no prefix when pressing Ctrl-L to insert/remove a list item. Works with non-ordered and check lists, but not with numbered lists.

• Fix: Resizing Handles for Left Side of Main and Preview Windows
  Make it easier to resize the main MM window and the Preview browser windows by providing slightly larger margin, which makes it easier to get a drag handle for resizing. Browser hosting windows tend to lose a little of their mouse sensitivity so the wider margin brings back better ability to get a drag handle for resizing.

• Fix: Image Previews in Paste Image and AI Image Dialogs
  Fixes an image corruption issue that caused images to preview incorrectly due to missing bitness and color depth values. Fixed. This fix should also improve load performance of the AI Image generator image history thumbnail strip.

• Fix: Restore .Html File Preview Option
  We had briefly removed Html previewing for .html files in interim releases, which has now been restored. There is now also an Configuration.Editor.EnablePreviewForHtmlDocuments option that can be set in the Settings to disable Html preview of .html files. The reason for this is that there is not 1st class support for Html documents and due to the document defaults Html content may not display very well. Also there are a few scenarios where switching between different documents will not preserve the previewer correctly for .html documents. These issues remain, but we've re-enabled due to several requests that this was a useful - and apparently used by many - feature most likely for it's easy Live Previewing of content.

• Fix: Zoom Level in Status Bar
  Added additional preset values (90%, 110% which are common) and fixed the way the values are adjusted to avoid validation errors in the UI. Zoom level updates immediately show in the editor as you type now.

3.6

January 22nd, 2025

• New Check Document Links Sidebar Panel
  There's new sidebar panel tab that can be used to validate links in the current document. Check Document Links is an option on the Tool menu and can also be accessed via the Command Palette (ctrl-shift-p -> Check Document Links`). A new sidebar pane is used to display links ordered by broken and valid links and you can click links to navigate to the corresponding link in the document. A context menu has additional options for links and images.

• Left Sidebar Split Panel Rendering
  The left sidebar now splits (optionally) into top and bottom panels that can be resized which allows for multiple views simultaneously. The top view by default hold file related views, while the bottom holds the Document Outline and Link Checker and other tools. The sidebar was refactored to operate quicker and more smoothly than in the original release. Rather than redrawing on rearrangements, we cache and reuse panels now whenever possible and only re-render in rare cases which results in non-janky and faster panel refresh display.

• Support for Admonitions Markdown Extensions
  Added support for a new Admonitions RenderExtension that renders Admonitions note/alert boxes.

• Embed YouTube Enhancements
  Add Open YouTube button when no video is selected yet. Automatically capture YouTube Url on clipboard when returning to the form and the Url is empty. New option to embed an Image Link instead of embedded IFRAME video to support hosts like GitHub with HTML/Script/CSS restrictions.

• YouTube Paste Options for non-embeddable Platform like GitHub
  When embedding YouTube videos from YouTube dialog, you can now choose from several embedding modes: IFrame (existed previously), Captured Preview Image and Link, or Markdown Media Link. The new options allow for YouTube links on GitHub and other platforms that don't allow for IFRAME player embedding.

• Capture YouTube Preview Images
  You can now capture the YouTube Preview screen as an image for embedding into your content. This allows linking of YouTube videos that encourage clicking links that looks like the YouTube player but is actually a linkable image. You can manually do this via the Preview Image capture, or use Embed Image Link to directly embed the linked image into the document. The explicit clipboard copy can be useful as a generic feature outside of Markdown Monster.

• New Editor Scroll Speed Configuration Switch
  You can now set the editor scroll speed which allows for speeding up scrolling. This is especially useful for touch pad users that can be limited by slow single line scroll speeds. Speed can be set from 1 (baseline) to 20. The new default is 5.

• AI Updates
  AI Translate, Summarize and Grammar Check are now accessible on the AI Toolbar drop down menu and via the Command Palette (ctrl-shift-p). The various dialogs that pop up have been cleaned up for simpler UI, and with options to re-run the current operation.

• Add X AI API Preset
  Add new AI preset for the X AI (ie. Grok) that presets the URL and default model.

• Update Ace Editor to 1.36.5
  Update to latest version of ACE Editor component. Fixes a few small editor bugs and also adds a GitHub Dark Editor Theme.

• Update HighlightJs to 11.10
  Update the Code Syntax highlighting in the previewer.

• Fix: Print to PDF Failures
  Fix a number edge case failures: Printing untitled files, fix issue with invalid margin numbers, update header/footer tooltip documentation and help docs. (#1151)

• Fix: Split Panel Rendering
  Refactor split panel rendering to operate quicker and more smoothly. Rather than redrawing on rearrangements, we cache and reuse panels now whenever possible and only re-render in rare cases.

• Fix: Configuration Backup locking up UI
  Fix issue that was causing the UI to lock up while backing up configuration files to Zip file or a folder.

• Fix: Remember Monitor Position for Maximized Windows
  Fixes issue where window position for maximized windows was not remembered: If you closed down MM when maximized it would always re-launch on the main screen. MM now remembers the maximized status and window position. It now also restores non-maximixed window position properly when coming out of maximized mode after a restart. (#1158)

• Fix: Create Weblog and Delete WebLog Inconsistencies
  Fix issue that caused the Weblog list to not update properly when adding and deleting Weblogs, requiring exiting the Weblog form and coming back in. Fixed so that updates are immediate. (#1127)

• Fix: WebLog Strip H1 Headers Setting
  Fix behavior of the Strip H1 Document Header checkbox on the Weblog publish form. Renamed the configuration key and 'un-negated' the checkbox text. The new default is true (checked) as most services like WordPress, Medium etc manage the title separate from the blog content. (#1138)

• Fix: WebLog Publish with Absolute Images
  Fix issue where blog posts that contain absolute image paths were not sending these images. Although we recommend you don't use absolute paths in Markdown and rather copy images to your local project or folder close to the document, image uploads from absolute paths now work correctly for WordPress and and MetaWeblog interfaces. (#1137)

• Fix: External Preview Window UI Issues
  Fix problem with empty preview pane when external preview is active. Fix Window resizing when switching between internal and external browsing modes. Properly remember preview mode and state across restarts. (#1172)

• Fix: Command Line Markdown To Pdf DLL Not Found Error
  Fix issue where running the command line Markdown to PDF generation fails due to a missing DLL dependency. Fixed. (#1174)

• Fix: Command Line Markdown To Pdf File Access Errors
  Fix issue where if a markdown file in a protected/read-only folder was rendered it would fail with access denied errors due to writing temp HTML file into the same folder as the source file. Moved temp file to temp location with base tag fix ups. Fixed. (#1175)

3.5

November 12th, 2024

• Updated PDF Rendering via WebView
  Swapped out the old wkHtmlToPdf engine for WebView for PDF rendering. The new engine provides more accurate rendering and allows for rendering styled themes, embedded fonts including FontAwesome icon fonts, customizable headers and footers, and improved print performance.

• Vertically Split Panel for Sidebar
  The left sidebar can now be split into two stacked vertical panes. By default the top pane shows the folder browser and favorites while the bottom shows the document outline at all times. A context menu lets you split the panel and to move tabs between panels.

• Reduced Installation Footprint
  Due to the removal of wkHtmlToPdf the installer size has been cut by 40% and installation footprint by nearly 50 megs.

• .NET 9.0
  v3.5 now runs on the .NET 9.0 Desktop runtime. v9 has further performance improvements including improved startup speed provided as part of the core runtime.

• Arm64 Support Improvements and Arm64 Runtime Installer
  Markdown Monster has had support for running on Arm for some time, but in this update we've fixed a few minor issues related to platform differences and we now explicitly support Arm64 runtime downloads during installation if .NET 9.0 is not installed.

• Allow for ~ Paths in Configuration and Recent File Names
  Configuration file paths now support ~ and Environment variables for paths and files saved automatically adjust the user path to ~ paths when saving in the user path. This should improve the ability to use configuration files across multiple machines using shared folders like Dropbox/OneDrive/iCloud etc.

• Hide Hidden Files in Default Folder Browser View
  Hidden files on disk are now hidden in the Folder Browser by default, unless you explictly use the Show All option to view files. Show All shows all files including hidden files as well as filtered folders and file extensions.

• Html Output now generates <title> Tag
  A title tag is now generated into all rendered Markdown, which effects both the preview and exported HTML documents. It also allows the PDF generator to automatically pull the title out for headers.

• Html Preview Output now renders into its own Temp Folder
  MM now renders preview output into a dedicated %TEMP%\mm folder. Previously MM rendered the preview HTML output into the user TEMP path, but there were occasional complications due to very large file counts. This can show as problems writing, slow write/read speed, and if for some reasons viewing the HTML output (ie. View Html) it was very slow if auto-follow is on in the folder browser due to massive file counts in temp. The dedicated folder alleviates all these potential issues.

• YouTube Embedding - Capture Title Screen
  You can now capture the YouTube title screen so you can create link embeddings for sites that don't support native YouTube IFRAME embedding. You can capture the preview screen to clipboard, file or embed it directly into the document.

• Fix: Folder Browser File Renaming Leaves old File Tab Open
  Fix issue where when renaming a file in the Folder Browser would open the new file in a tab, but occasionally leave open the old file and also leave the old file in place.
  (#1141)

• Fix: Empty Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikeout etc. behavior
  When using bolding on the above tags we now (again) create empty tags with the cursor in between the markup symbols (ie. **~** where ~ is the cursor location).
  (#1140)

• Fix: Clean up Spell Check Icon on ControlBox
  Make the spellcheck state icon more obvious with check mark and x-mark to indicate current spell checking state.

• Fix: Non-Markdown or Text Files are initially spellchecked
  Fix issue where non-markdown or non-text documents show spelling errors when they shouldn't. (#1143)

3.4

August 20th, 2024

• AI Support Features: Summarize, Translate, Grammar Checking
  We've added a number of AI assisted operations that allow you to create a summary of the current document or selection, translate a selection or the entire document, or perform a basic grammar check of a selection of text.
  Features require an OpenAI/Azure OpenAI API key or local a OpenAI server like Ollama.

• Updated OpenAI Image Generation Connections
  We've made changes to the way OpenAI Image Generation API connections are made, using a shared mechanism with the new completion features. If you had a previously configured image provider you'll likely need to re-enter your provider connection information.

• Add Support for PlantUml Diagrams
  You can now preview the embedded PlantUml diagrams in the previewer as well as capture and export diagram output in your Markdown documents.

• Toggle Preview Zoom
  Provide a more consistent way to zoom the preview window within the editor. You can now press Ctrl-11 to zoom the preview in the editor/preview pane, and the choice persists across documents.

• Switched to FontAwesome v6.x
  Markdown Monster now uses FontAwesome 6.0 in the preview renderer from the old v4.70 (ugh!). All font styles and the compatibility layer are included to ensure that existing usage of FA fonts in the preview continues to work.
  Keep in mind that FA icon usage depends on support in your final Markdown output rendering target (ie. GitHub, Doc or Blog site etc.) and that engine has to support FontAwesome. GitHub does not support FontAwesome in its Markdown renderer..

• Add OnContextMenuOpened Addin Handler
  This method allows interception of several of the context menus that get opened. You can check for a specific context menu type and then use this to potentially inject additional menu options into the context menus.

• Add Copy Selection on Preview Context Menu
  Add visual Copy Selection to the Preview Context menu. Previously you could only use Ctrl-C to copy content.

• Add Support for Addin Loading for mmCli Addins are now loaded for mmCli so things like Markdown Render Extensions and Custom Parsers can run in mmCli.

• Fix: Cleanup DocFX formatting
  Changed DocFx formatting for note boxes to more closely match GitHub's light and dark theme styling. (#)

• Fix: Search Link in Link Dialog and Link Lookup
  Fix search engine lookup that provides a link list for the selected search text. Provide current Edge browser string to help with Bing not identifying content as a bot.

3.3

May 21st, 2024

• Support for [[_TOC_]] Auto-Generated TOC
  You can now insert [[_TOC_]] into your document to force the preview and HTML output to generate a table of content dynamically into the document. The Document outline has a new button that inserts this dynamic link.
  Note: This feature may not be supported by your Markdown server tooling (ie. GitHub does not support this while GitLab and Azure does). (#1084)

• External Programs can now set a EditorKeyBoardShortcut
  You can now associate a keyboard shortcut to an external program that is added. The shortcut is active only inside of the editor, but it allows for quick launching programs.

• Improved Link Lookup in Paste Href Dialog
  The Link from Web button now runs considerably faster to retrieve search results and provides more consistent results. There's now also a status bar that provides better progress and error information when retrieving links. The context menu has also been adjusted for better optimized viewing. You can now also use alt-l (Link Lookup) and alt-s (search web) via hot keys inside of the dialog.

• Add Header Level to Document Outline
  The document outline sidebar now displays the header level as a small number next to the header icon. This makes it easier to see at a glance what indentation level the current selection has as the document outline stays in sync with cursor position. It also lets you more easily see if your document levels are skipping levels. (#1089)

• Improve PDF Output for Page Breaks
  Add additional Print styling to the HTML generated for print to attempt to better keep together paragraphs, headers and code blocks. This especially improves the Print to Pdf functionality.

• Additional System Information on About
  The About dialog now shows additional system information if you hover over or click on the version information. Clicking the new info icon (or the entire line) will copy the information to be copied to your clipboard which is useful for bug reports. Info also includes WebView Runtime and SDK versions now.

• Log WebView Runtime and SDK with Errors
  When errors occur, we now log the WebView runtime and SDK versions. Since a large percentage of errors are related to WebView internal issues that are forwarded to the WebView team this information is often useful for them.

• Improved CSV Import Options
  CSV import fixes ability to use tab character as you weren't able to set that character previous in the input field. There's no a dropdown for common CSV separator characters including tab (\t) which can now also be represented in the input field. The separator value is now remembered. (#1086)

• Add Git -> Open in Diff Editor on Context Menus
  There are now context menu options on the Folder Browser and Document Tab context menus to open the current (saved) document on disk in the configured Diff editor. Note that files are diffed from disk and any updates will affect the disk file. If the editor file has no pending changes any changes are immediately updated in the editor. If there are pending changes, the save operation will prompt to decide which file to choose or to diff files again cherry pick changes.

• Fix: Many Fixes in the Folder Browser
  Thanks to @internationils for his many support issues posted, that helped fix many small inconsistencies in the folder browser related to drag and drop, renaming, context menu operation and more.

• Fix: Making changes to MarkdownMonster.json Configuration file in IDE now automatically reloads Settings
  It's been notoriously difficult to make changes manually to MM's configuration in markdownmonster.json while MM is running, due to the way active settings were saved on shutdown. We now reload settings from file if markdownmonster.json is saved from within the IDE which ensures the latest settings are active. Note: If you save externally in another editor this won't happen and you still need to ensure MM is not running in order to update settings that will stick.
  We still recommend that you use the interactive Settings UI where possible to avoid accidentally setting invalid configuration values, but this is useful for settings that can't be directly set inside of the Settings UI. (#1083)

• Fix: TOC formatting for Inline Code and Escaped Characters
  When generating a Markdown TOC into the document the inserted text now handles non-plain text that contains escaped text and inline code better. (related to#1084)

• Fix: KeyBinding Manager editing inside of the MM editor
  MM now saves and applies hotkeys immediately by reloading all key bindings. This makes hot keys added or changed immediately available (if they don't interfere with other bindings) and also fixes an issue where new keys where sometimes 'lost' and overwritten. As previous fix: This only works if you use the internal editor - if using external editors make sure MM is not running to ensure changes take.

• Fix: PDF Output Preview not working
  Fix issue where Save To PDF failed to display the PDF even when the option to display after generation was checked.

• Fix: Pop out YouTube Links to new Shell Browser
  Any of the links in the Embed YouTube Videos dialog browser now navigate in the user's configured shell Web Browser (ie. Edge, Chrome, Brave, FireFox etc.) rather than popping up a limited WebView browser window. Specifically this is meant for clicking on the video title or Watch on YouTube links but also any links that are shown in-video or after the video completes.

• Fix: Use Theirs when file was updated externally
  Fix the Use Theirs option that reloads the document from disk, if you try to save and the file has been externally changed. You get options to Use Yours, Use Theirs and Compare which brings up your configured Diff editor to chose individual changes. (#1099)

• Fix: Add Reload Editor Context Menu Option to force document to reload
  This functionality existed previously, but there was no indication this was available. We've also removed the various 'window' context menu options when the window height is <1100 pixels to avoid too menu menu choices that overflow the screen. If window is big the larger menu still displays. (#1099)

• Fix: Check Integrity of JSON before saving MarkdownMonster.json config file
  Before saving a potentially invalid JSON file, if editing MarkdownMonster.json configuration file manually in the MM editor, the file is now checked for validity first. If the JSON is invalid a status error message is displayed and the file is not saved.
  Note: Externally editing the file and saving can still result in an invalid file in which case the configuration file will revert to its default settings. (#1098)

• Change: Link Dialog Path Resolution
  When selecting a file or folder from disk to link to paths are now always embedded as relative paths, except when paths walk all the way back to the root and back up. Any of those root paths are embedded as absolute file:/// path links. (#1044)

• Allow for specifying background color for PreviewBrowser
  There's a new configuration setting that can be used to specify a

• Fix: Spellchecker with Quotes around Strings
  Fix issue where quotes around strings were causing the spell checker to incorrectly place spell check error highlights. (#1101)

• Fix: Table Editor Remembered Position when Window is Pinned
  Fix issue where a pinned main window was causing an invalid, potentially off screen location for the table editor on launch. (#1102)

• Fix: Document Stats on Preview Editor Display
  Fix issue where document stats on the status bar were not updating when the document is browsed in preview mode from the Folder browser. (#1109)

• Fix: Context Menu in Folder Browser Navigates Item
  When right clicking into the context menu in the folder browser, the selected item was navigated, which is unusual behavior. Changed now to not navigate to that item, but the context menu acts on the item underneath the cursor regardless of selection status. (#1112)

• Fix: Handle .razor Files in Folder Browser and Editor
  Added .razor as a default supported editor format so these files can be previewed and edited in the editor. Note: Razor/Blazor syntax is is not directly supported, it's provided as an Html dialect. You can view externally with Open With or Open in VS Code (if installed) for more complete functionality.

3.2

January 25th, 2024

• Move to .NET 8.0
  Move all application binaries to .NET 8.0. The installer now requires .NET 8.0, so updates on machines that are running .NET 7.0 will no update to .NET 8.0. .NET 8.0 Shared Runtime is dynamically installed during setup or at runtime (for portable installs).

• Add OpenAI Image Generation Addin in (Preview)
  You can now generate AI images using OpenAI and Dall-E 3 to generate images in your documents or for general purpose use. The plugin provides an interactive way to create prompts and generate images. You can embed, save or copy generated images and browse through and manage previously generated images for later review or re-prompting. requires an OpenAI API key

• Image Generator Azure OpenAI Support
  We've added support for Azure OpenAI keys for using the Image generator. Note: Currently Dall-E 3 is only supported in a single Azure Region (Sweden Central), and you have to set up an Azure Dall-E deployment specifically in this region.

• Add Support to Save with Elevated Rights
  You can now optionally save documents that are permissions restricted by elevating to Administrator. If a file is not authorized a notification pops up to show an option to save with elevated rights instead.

• Add MathJax 3.0 Support
  Update the Math rendering extension to use the latest version of MathJax which has much richer support including much improved Accessibility (including Braille support). (#1080)

• Improved KeyBinding Manager Support for any Command
  You can now bind any of MM's internal commands to a keyboard shortcut. You can specify the command by CommandName in the MarkdownMonster-Keybindings.json configuration file. Command names can be found in the class reference documentation under AppCommands and its various sub-objects. Commands can be specified by their property name or with the full xxxxCommand name.

• Add Caption to Dropped Files and Images
  When dragging or pasting files or images into the editor, we now try to guess the caption based on the filename using Proper Case, Snake Case, Camel case de-conversions if no spaces are present.

• 'Copy Link' for Web Links and 'Copy Image Link' for Images in Previewer
  In the preview browser you can now copy links for Web images and links to the clipboard from the Previewer context menu. Note that only Web links - not relative or local file path links - show this option on the context menu.

• Updated GitHub Preview Styling
  Minor tweaks to the GitHub default preview templates: Remove the grid outline when rendering under 980px frame width to reduce wasted space. Grid outline is rendered in larger screen sizes (980px+). Clean up blockquotes and docfx renderings and backgrounds. Clean up differences between the GitHub light and dark preview templates.

• Updates to DocFx Preview Styling
  In light of GitHub's addition of some DocFx functionality in its Markdown renderer we've more closely matched the default styling of the Note/Warning/Info/Tip block quote rendering to more closely match the GitHub styling in the GitHub styles. Also updated the Blackout template styling.

• Small And Italic Command Palette
  Added Small and Italic to the command palette as a quick short cut to add the compound operation to a selection. Similar to the existing Bold and Italic operation.

• Table Editor Commands to Command Palette
  You can now access Insert Table, Format Table and Edit Table as commands from the Command Palette (ctrl-shift-p).

• Improved Folder Browser Search Results
  The Find in Files functionality now includes a file icon for file type, the number of matches per file, the file date, and a tool tip that shows file information and a preview of the file's content for quick review.

• Move WebView Environment to %localappdata%
  Due to some issues with portable installs and write permissions, the local WebView environment folder has now been moved to the %localappdata%\Markdown Monster folder which is (normally) writable and always accessible. This avoids problems with users installing the portable version and not setting their PortableSettings folder to be writable. This at least ensures that the editors and other viewers load correctly.

• Installation moved to Program Files
  We've moved the default installation location for the full installation to the Program Files folder to avoid common installation issues related to Windows Account usage that in the past would install certain components in the wrong location when elevation was required. We've also moved all remaining updatable content (except the preview templates and previewers) out of the install folder into common file location.

• Portable Install Behavior Remains unchanged
  Besides the changes to the full install, the Portable Install can still be installed in any location of your choice as a self-contained install that can store all application, and common updatable configuration and support data in a local folder hierarchy. Portable installs by default use a contained PortableSettings folder which falls back to the %appdata%\Markdown Monster common path that is also used by the full install if permissions are not available to write files. This behavior is mostly unchanged except the additional files that now go into the PortableSettings or common folder.

• Fix: Image Generator Memory Usage
  Fix memory leaks for the image list loading which result in very large memory usage when repeatedly loading the AI Image Generation Addin.

• Fix: Image Generator Load Time
  Fix slow startup and UI lockup when loading the AI Image Generator with a lot of images. Images are now loaded asynchronously and leave the UI responsive even with large amounts of recent images displayed.##

• Fix: DocFx include/code Embedding
  Fix issue with built-in DocFx include/code embedding directives ([!include] and [!code-lang]) which were failing if multiple directives were used on the same page.

• Fix: Preview Render Bug When # (and others) Character in Base Path
  Fix issue with a number of extended characters that are legal for local file names, but not legal in URLs. Due to the way browsers parse URLs this is 'partial' url encoding so a custom encoding scheme is used. #1068

• Fix: Non-existant .md File Navigation in Previewer
  Fix Previewer so that when navigating a non-existent Markdown file no navigation (to an error page before) occurs and a statusbar error is displayed pointing at the missing expanded filename.

• Fix: Image Link Navigation in Previewer
  Fix issue where image links (links that wrap an image) are not properly navigated due to the initial image target. Fixed to treat nested image links like simple links for preview navigation.

• Fix: PDF Generation output does not open file for Viewing
  Fix issue where even if you have the Display output file checkbox set on the PDF generation form output was not displayed. Fixed and you should now see the output displayed in your system configured PDF Viewer.

• Fix: Consolidate WebView Initialization
  Fix WebView Initialization by consolidating the WebView environment into a single instance that is shared across all instances. This fixes rare WebView crashes with UnauthorizedException errors caused by potentially errand WebView instances. It also slightly improves initial load performance.

• Fix: WebView Install Folder in Startup Location
  Fixed issue where the YouTube embedding dialog was causing the WebView to create a separate WebView environment in the install folder rather than the common shared location used by all other WebView controls. This also fixes a common point of crashes

Breaking Changes

• Recommend full uninstall and reinstall for Full Installations
  Due to the move to Program Files from LocalAppData install location, we recommend you do a full, uninstall and then re-install Markdown Monster if you are using the full installer or Chocolatey install. It's not required, and if you don't re-install the existing %localappdata%\Markdown Monster or your own custom location will continue to be used. The explicit uninstall ensures that the new Programs Files path is used on a new install. Portable installs don't need to have anything changed.

• Remove WebView_ Folder From Markdown Monster Install Folder (if present)
  If your MM installation folder contains a WebView_* folder, it's recommended that you shut down MM and delete the entire folder. This folder was not intended to be placed and should be deleted so it will no longer take up space.

3.0.1 - Official Release

August 28th, 2023

• Updated Version runs on .NET 7.0
  We've moved Markdown Monster to run under .NET 7.0 to take advantage of better integration with new .NET features and support libraries as well as slightly improved performance and many development improvements on our end. This release requires the .NET 7.0 Desktop Runtime (7.0.3 or later). The latest runtime is installed as part of the full setup process if a compatible version is not present. For the portable version the runtime either needs to be present or has to be installed. To install the runtime you can use mm.exe -runtimeinstall or manually download and install from Microsoft's .NET Download site.

• Added GitHub Dark Preview Theme
  Since GitHub has supported dark mode for some time we've added a GitHub Dark theme. This is now also the default preview theme for dark mode. Additionally there are a few adjustments to the GitHub (light) theme to keep it up to date with the actual GitHub site.

• Light Theme Improvements
  Added a number of modifications and cleanups to the light theme. Many improvements in background/foreground combos, selections as well as using more distinctive colors for separators and borders.

• Updated Icons throughout Application
  We needed to move off our old FontAwesome 4 icon set due to incompatibility issues in .NET Core, and in the process we are now are running on FontAwesome 6 which provides many additional icon options as well as improved color and stroke support. New and sharper icons make for clearer toolbar, button and menu options throughout the application.

• Drag and Drop support for Video and Audio Files Links
  You can now drag video and music files from the folder browser and Explorer into the editor and have them auto-linked as media files. Videos embed as a video player, audio files as audio player.
  Note: Audio/Video linking is not supported by all Markdown platforms/renderers, so make sure that your target platform supports this functionality.

• New WebLog Post Option to post to New-Posts Folder first
  For those of you that write a lot of blog posts or procrastinate with finishing posts, it can be useful to create new posts in the New Posts folder until the post is ready to be published. If the post is in New-Posts or Drafts folder, publishing will prompt you to optionally save the post in the WebLog post folder structure (postFolder/yyyy-MM/title-of-the-post). There's no obligation to use this of course and you can always move your posts to whatever location you like, but this provides an organized way to keep track of your posts and drafts.

• Add Custom External Programs for Documents
  You can now add external programs to launch for active document in the editor or for files and folders in the Folder Browser. Launch individual programs or URLs and specify arguments in a variety of ways. (belatedly fixes #947)

• Enable Mermaid Charts By Default
  With wider support of Mermaid in various rendering platforms including GitHub, Mermaid rendering is now enabled by default. There's still a Setting flag that can be used to turn checking for Mermaid code on and off which can improve load and render speed very slightly when false. Note: If you're updating a previous version, your current setting will not change so if it was set at default of false it'll continue to stay that way and have to be manually enabled. You can use Tools|Settings|Mermaid to set this value.

• Update ACE Editor to current version
  It's been a while since the last synced to Ace Editor updates and it looks like there are a number of improvements and updates to the Markdown syntax. Also added a few additional updates to the csharp syntax.

• Preview Zoom Sticky across Tabs
  Preview Zoom previously only worked on the active Preview tab and would not stick around if a new tab was activated or even when navigating back to the same tab. Now applying a zoom level (via Ctrl-Mousewheel or ctrl-+ and ctrl+-) is applied to all preview tabs and remains sticky for the entire session.

• Add Non-Breaking Space and Non-Breaking Hyphen Markup
  Added menu and command palette options for inserting non-breaking space and non-breaking ( ) and non-breaking hyphen (‑) characters into markup. You can find it on the Extra Markup (ctrl-x) menu and using the command palette. (#1034)

• Add Smaller Text Icon to Main Toolbar
  There's now a small text icon on the toolbar that wraps text with <small>text</small> tags.

• Improvements to Folder Browser Navigation and Context Menu
  More improvements to improve folder browser navigation. Selections should be much smoother, drag and drop more responsive and the context menu should show with less jitter.

• Folder Browser PDF Documents now display in the Previewer
  When you use the Folder Browser and navigate to a Pdf file, the file is now displayed in the previewer without requiring to click in explicitly. You can still open PDF files externally via Open options on the context menu. The previewer is a Chromium based preview so you get all standard browser print and PDF export options as you would in an external browser.

• Video and MP3 Files now open in the Previewer
  .mp4 and .mp3 files now open in the Previewer to play when double clicked in the Folder Browser.

• Built-in Web Server improvements
  The built-in Web server now is more responsive and provides additional commands for remote execution.

• Change: Unlabeled fenced Code Blocks render as Text
  Code blocks that don't have an explicit language specified (ie. ``` instead of ```csharp) now render as plain text instead of attempting to auto-detect language. Auto-detection often would pick the wrong language as it can be very ambiguous and GitHub also renders as plain text. (#1001)

• Support for Async Code Snippet Templates
  Code Snippets now support await calls in C# expressions or code blocks. This is necessary for accessing many of the Model.ActiveEditor methods that effect editor behavior (most commonly await Model.ActiveEditor.GetSelection()).

• Support for Structured Statements in Code Snippet Templates
  C# snippets now also support structured code blocks using {{% <statement> }} that are directly embedded as code. This allows for if and for type structured statement blocks that can bracket other text or expressions. But it also allows for arbitrary C# code blocks to be executed and act as integrated code.

• Custom, On-Demand .NET Runtime Installation Launcher
  MM 3.0 uses .NET 7.0 and requires a Desktop Runtime installation to run and these runtimes are not installed on Windows by default. We've created a custom, on-demand runtime checker and download and install process that only runs if the minimum runtime requested for MM isn't installed. This helps run on .NET 7.0 without having to ship runtimes as part of the distribution keeping download sizes down. Currently we require .NET 7.0.3 or later.

• Removed automatic WebView Installer in Setup
  As Windows 10+ now automatically updates the WebView control as part of Windows updates, we'll assume a valid version of the WebView is installed, so the WebView installer no longer runs on setup, but rather checks for a valid version inside of the application on startup. In the rare case that a newer version is required we then run the installer explicitly. This makes for a much cleaner and quicker install experience in most cases.

• Dropped Support for Windows 7 and 8, Server 2012 and earlier This unfortunate change is due to requirements of the WebView component and Chromium Engine used by that that is dropping support for pre-Windows 10 versions of Windows. The WebView is used in MM to render the editor and preview panes as well as various support screens. MM still works as of now until the 1900 releases of the WebView come into release which officially drop the earlier Windows versions. versions prior to 3.0 should continue to work with older Windows versions

• Add mmcli enable-windows-longpaths
  Added two mmcli commands to allow enable/disable Windows Long Path support. Two commands are enable-windows-longpaths and disable-windows-longpaths.

• Fix: Opening folders from the Command Line in Folder Browser
  Fixed issue When using the Commandline syntax (ie. mm . or mm c:\temp) to open folders which open in the folder browser. Folder often would or start loading and 'get stuck'. Fixed via slightly delayed load and async updates.

• Fix: High DPI Scaling for Editor Pane
  Fix issue where large DPI zoom levels were over adjusting the size of the editor pane's font size.

• Fix: Track Requests in Folder Browser
  Fix the tracking feature so that it selects the currently active file in addition to the folder. Regression fix for behavior change in recent async upgrade.

• Fix Presentation Mode when navigating to other documents Fix issue where navigating to other documents from within presentation mode would jump out of presentation mode and into a broken intermediate mode where you need to press F11 once to get back to 'regular' edit/preview mode and twice to get back into presentation mode. The fix lets you navigate the target document which then also shows in presentation mode. (#1033)

• Fix: Folder Browser Context Menu doesn't close
  Fix issue with Folder Browser context menu not closing. Fixed. (#1036)

• Fix: Slow Git Window Activation on large Git Repos
  When accessing large Git repos first load of the Git dialog was very slow. Reduced reptitive status look up and added an async wrapper to initial status retrieval. Fixed.

• Fix: Mermaid Rendering to use new Markup Syntax
  Mermaid recently switched its default rendering syntax from using <div> tags to <pre> tags. Oddly some charts still worked, while others were failing only working with <pre> tags. We now use <pre> tag translation of ``` mermaid directives.

• Fix: Better Error Messages for Unbalanced Grid Tables
  Provide better error message that includes the row that failed when Grid tables cannot be parsed - typically due to unbalanced | characters. You now get a status error message that lists the row where the problem occurs.

• Fix: Distraction Free Mode Issues
  Fix distraction free mode bug that didn't hide Tabs in Light mode. Fix issues with properly restoring mode when undoing distraction free mode.

2.9

April 2nd, 2023

• Multi-Line Markup for Inline Elements
  You can now select multiple lines of inline elements - bold, italic, strikethrough, underline etc. - and apply it to multiple lines. (#1003)

• Multi-Line Markup for Soft Returns
  You can now select multiple lines and apply Soft Returns to all the lines in the selection which makes it easier to work with list text that doesn't use bullets. (#1003)

• Easier Html Exports with a new Export Dialog
  Html Exports from your markdown are now easier with a dedicated dialog that lets you select the type of Html export (raw fragment, self-contained Html document, folder assets, zip file). This makes the export a lot less cryptic than previous Save File dialog that used only file types for 'hints' on functionality. (#1000)

• Add Mermaid Markup ShortCuts and Command Palette
  You can now use the Extra Markdown dropdown and the Command Palette to wrap Mermaid diagrams automatically with the required Mermaid markup tags. You can wrap Mermaid code from the Clipboard or from the editor text selection. (#1018)

• Add DarkMode to Emoji Picker
  Added dark mode operation to the Emoji picker and also bumped up the size of the individual emojis a bit.

• Add Copy to Clipboard for Code Snippets to GitHub Preview
  The GitHub preview now has buttons on code snippets to copy code to clipboard when previewing or exporting as HTML.

• Re-enable Shell Drag and Drop for Images and Markdown Documents
  You can now once again drag images and Markdown documents into the editor from Explorer or other shell explorers. Files can only be dropped at the currently selected cursor location - the location cannot be changed with the drag cursor unfortunately. This feature was temporarily disabled as the new WebView uses a completely different mechanism for file dropping.

• Embedded Document TOC now preserves header Markup (bold, italic, code etc.)
  When you embed a TOC into the document, any markup in extracted headers is preserved. So the TOC now includes inline bold, italic, and code text to match the original headers.

• Show Diff Editor for Crash Backup files when Opening Files
  If AutoSaveBackups is enabled MM creates a backup file of the open document that is removed when the document is saved or closed. If the file is around when the document is opened MM likely crashed and lost some changes. If the backup file is found, MM will now open a Diff editor if configured and also position the folder browser on the back up file.

• Add a Show All Files Button to the Folder Browser
  The Folder Browser now has a button that shows all files that ignores the file and folder ignore list. This lets you see back up files (if enabled), git and editor files and more as well as any custom ignored files you've added.

• Fix: Preview Link Navigation
  Fix regression bug related to async processing which caused navigation to external links to navigate the browser and lose the preview document. Fixed. Also refactored the document processing pipeline for opening documents from the previewer to fix previous lockups in that process and navigation to specific lines in the editor after opening.

• Fix: Random Application Crashes
  Fix a problem with random crashes related to dialogs opening in an invalid Task context and Alt menu activation in some instances causing crashes. Both operations are related to a recent bug introduced in the WebView and code getting triggered that fails at the system level. Fixed by properly handling the Task environment for these operations, so that the WebView code that triggers these errors is not actually invoked.

• Fix: Alt Menu Activation
  Alt Menu activation for the Window menu was not working and often crashing the application due to a change in the underlying WebView2 control. Fixed menu activation logic.
  Note: Alt menu activation from within the editor tends to need an extra character to activate the menu for navigation (ie. to activate the Window menu alt-alt-w or alt-w-w get you there instead of alt-w).

• Fix: Automatic File Backup not Working
  Fixed issue where Auto file back was not correctly saving the backup file in the same location as the base document. Fixed. Related Fix: Added support to Show all Files in Folder browser that lets you see the backup files in the Folder browser.

• Fix: Change File Detection in Inactive Tabs
  Fix issue where inactive tabs that have underlying file changes and aren't dirty locally were not automatically updating from underlying file changes. Now an underlying file change will automatically update the document when the tab is activated.

• Fix: PDF Links with Spaces or Extended Characters
  Fix an issue where PDF output was breaking links that were UrlEncoded due to spaces or extended characters in the link. Fixed by Url Decoding before rendering. (#1011)

• Fix: Save as PDF Extra Page
  Fix issue where when you use the Print Dialog's Save to PDF generates a trailing blank page due to CSS styling. Fix CSS to remove extra page.

• Fix Presentation Mode Scrolling and Sync
  Fix issue with presentation mode where the viewer was not scrolling properly in presentation mode. Fixed. Also fixed issue with the sync between the editor and the preview in presentation mode which now preserves the location when toggling between modes and keeps in sync in presentation mode. (#1019)

• Fix: File System Drag and Drop into the Editor
  When the WebView was introduced file system drag and drop into the editor no longer worked. Files dropped would open in a browser window or open in the shell. This update supports various types of dropped files, from explorer by dropping them into the document at the current editor location (no support for moving the caret though). Browser links and images can now also be dropped and auto-link as links or remote images (use Copy Image for locally copying Web images).

• Fix: Context Menu Oddities
  Fixed timing issue with context menus where menus were occasionally displaying the default Edge context menu instead of MMs native menu. Removed async call interface, and only applied to the spellcheck display now which improves menu popup speed and always bypasses the native menu. This was most notable with Table Editor functionality like Edit and Format Table.

• Fix: Document Outline Sidebar with Bold and Italic Text
  Document outline incorrectly displayed inline bold and italic text as Markdig Inlines. Fixed. (#1013)

• Fix: Startup Offscreen Positioning
  Changed logic used for MM startup detection of offscreen locations on the desktop, and moving the window into the visible Viewport if completely or mostly obscured. Previously, in some instances Windows were moved even if they were fully visible. (#998)

• Fix: Format Table with Left and Center Alignment
  Fix issue where left and center alignment on Pipe tables was adding an extra space. (#1005)

• Fix: Text Drag and Drop starting with # tag No longer drops as Link
  Fixed issue where dragging a text selection in the editor that starts with # would drop as a link expansion rather than plain text. The # now pastes as plain text as expected. (#1002)

• Fix: Snippet Execution Fails with Dynamic C# Expressions/Code
  Fix bug with Snippets execution which include code snippets due to a removed reference. (#1027)

• Fix: Distraction Free Mode Issues
  Fix Tab Headers not hiding in Light Theme mode. Fix resizing when coming out of DFM. Don't save Window sizing information when shutting down and restore to previous non DFM state.

2.8

January 26th, 2023

• Add Proper and Camel Case to Extra Commands and Command Palette
  You can now make selected text proper/title cased or camel cased via the command palette.

• Command Palette: Added Font Settings
  You can now access the font settings in the Visual Settings Editor via Ctrl-Shift-P Font. Also added a tooltip to the font size dialog to point at the Settings and Command Palette shortcuts.

• Folder Browser Keyboard Navigation now Previews
  When navigating the folder browser with the up and down keys, the editor now displays a preview of documents similar to the behavior when single clicking on a document. Editable (Markdown, text and other known editable formats) are opened in preview mode, meaning once you navigate off the document is closed or replaced by the next preview document, unless the document has been edited or explicitly opened as a full document.

• Table Editor Paste now supports CSV directly
  CSV imports into the table editor have been supported via Load From for a long time, but you can now also use the Paste operation to CSV content from Excel, Google Docs etc. directly into the table editor. Load From still has more control but Paste is quicker assuming the content uses tab delimited clipboard CSV. Paste now supports: Grid Table, Pipe Table, HTML, JSON and CSV. Load From also allows loading CSV and JSON from files (and clipboard explicitly with options).

• Update: Default Font Size to 16px
  Set default font-size a little smaller to prevent very low res displays from displaying too big of a font initially. This will make fonts smaller for hi-res displays, but people that have hi-resolutiuon displays are used to having to adjust font-sizes up typically.

• Update: Markdown Monster now uses latest WebView Async Model
  A few versions ago, changes in the async WebView control model broke most of Markdown Monsters JavaScript to .NET interop functionality that caused us to stick with older versions of the .NET WebView connector. In this release we've refactored all of our JS->.NET interfaces to work with the new async behaviors. This true async support should also improve responsiveness of some tasks, as well as minimize the occasional WebView crashes we've observed in our logs.

• Fix: Git Commit Dialog Load Time
  Fix issue with the Git dialog taking a long time to load with large repositories. We've refactored the dialog to load the repository after the form has initialized which removes a race condition that was severely slowing down the initial load of the repository. The form now loads immediately with a status message in case of slowish loads (which should now be rare) and for most repos the load should be near instant.

• Fix: Table Editor Add Row on Bottom
  Fix behavior of Add row on bottom to continue keeping focus and scroll into visible viewport. Also now allow adding multiple empty rows at the end (previously this wasn't allowed). You can now also add a new Header row by Add new Row in the header.

• Fix: Various Range Bound Errors in Table Editor
  Fix several errors that caused the table editor to crash when adding/removing many rows/columns.

• Fix: Status Icon Animation Sizing
  Fix issue where on occasion the status icon would bloat to massive size if messages were overlapping.

• Fix: Document Navigation in the Previewer
  Fix crash/hang issue when navigating to other documents from the Preview Window.

• Fix: Change Scrollbar Sizes for Editor and Preview
  The default scrollbar sizes for the Editor and Previewer have been bumped up slightly to better work with hi-res displays and sizing has been switched from hard pixel sizing to em sizing. Previewer and Editor scrollbar styling can be applied in the generic Editor/editor.css and PreviewThemes/MyTheme/theme.css for the specifically active theme.

• Fix: Folder Browser File Renaming Issues
  Fix issue where rename operations would in some cases not save pending changes and wouldn't delete the originally renamed file. Error was introduced during async conversion and due to timing issues. Fixed. #986

2.7

October 18th, 2022

• Add File Info Tooltips for Preview Tabs
  Preview tabs now show the filename and display a tooltip that has file information in the same way as editor documents do.

• Add Image Size to Image File Tooltips
  Images in the Folder Browser and open Tabs now display image tooltips that include image size (width x height) and image DPI.

• Preview Tab File Names and Tooltip
  Preview tabs for non-document files now show the filename and file tooltip info just like document tabs. Previously, non-document tabs behaved differently due to the missing document instance.

• Command Palette: Add Speech/Read Aloud Commands
  Add commands for reading aloud to the command palette. Access via Speak or Read Aloud keywords.

• Command Palette: Many more Commands Added
  All List operations (plain, numbered and checkbox), Emojii, YouTube embedding, Find in document, Find Files, Find in Files, among otherrs. To access Command Palette press Ctrl-Shift-P or use the searchbox in the Title bar.

• Fix: Refresh Cached Images from Clipboard
  Fixed issue where pasting an image from the clipboard would not properly refresh the preview and scroll to the top of the preview - until next cursor movement. Also fixed caching issue where pasting new same name image would cache and not show the new image.

• Fix: Open With... From Folder Browser
  Open With stopped working apparently due to a framework change that related to the UseShellExecute setting which has to be explicitly set off to open the dialog.

• Fix: Startup Path Fixup for CommonFolder
  Fixed issues with the common folder location that requires that some files and folders to be stored on the local machine. Previously the InternalCommonFolder was erroneously the same as CommonFolder causing some look up issues

• Fix: Folder Browser External File Update and File Info
  Fix issue where newly added files and files that have changed did not reflect current file information. Change detection now reloads updated file information.

• Fix: Right Click Focus in Folder Browser
  Fix folder browser focus when right clicking on files. In some situations the selection of the previous item would not clear and the context menu would pop up for the previous selection. Updated logic to explicitly select on right click. Fixed.

• Fix: Context Menu Key not working
  Fix the Context Menu key on keyboards not working. Re-enabled, but behavior is not ideal as it displays at mouse cursor, not at editor position.

• Fix: Escape Pipe | Characters in Grid Tables
  Pipe characters in Grid Tables have to be escaped and using pipes in Grid Tables prerviously broke Grid parsing as the | was interpreted as a column break. Fixed by now properly escaping | with \| in the Markdown editor and using plain | in the Table Editor.

• Fix: Git Pull Issue with Pull when using Branch other than Master
  Fixed issue with Pull not respecting the active Branch in the Git dialog. (#976)

• Fix: Weblog Post not updating Markdown YAML Metadata
  Depending on your selection of Auto Save Document information typed into the Weblog Publishing dialog would not update the meta data in the document. When Auto Save was not set the data was not updated (incorrect) and not saved (correct). Fixed: Now the document is always updated, and the flag correctly affects only whether the document is auto-saved after the meta data has been updated.

• Fix: Pop up Context Menu with Context Menu Key at Cursor Position
  Fix issue where keyboard Context Menu key was not opening the context menu at the current cursor location.

• Fix: Cached WebBrowser Environment Location
  Fixed browser environment location which now properly uses the local machine common path, rather than a potentially shared common path. Sharing in a common path could cause corruption and unexpected browser lockups and crashes.

• Fix: License Unregistering
  Fixed issue with licenses getting unregistered due to a registration issue on the server end missing the version number. Fixed recent licenses by adding versions properly, and new licenses creating with product version supplied.

2.6

June 30th, 2022

• Drag and Drop Link Insertion from Document Outline into Editor
  You can now drag a document outline selection into the open Markdown Document as a link that points at the #Hash id in the document. (#936)

• Improved Snippet Startup Speed
  With the new Roslyn integration which runs in-process, startup speed of first snippet activation is much improved even on a cold start. Additionally the PreloadCSharpCompiler configuration flag in the Snippets addin can reduce startup speed down to a fractional second.

• Add Subscript and Superscript Markup Operations
  Added sub and superscript to the Extra Markdown operation drop down menu which creates <sub></sub> and <super></super> wrappings around text selections.

• Keybindings for Numbered List and CheckBox List
  Added keybindings for number list (ctrl-shift-l) and checkbox list (ctrl-alt-l).

• Many Updated Command Palette Commands
  Added many additional Commands to the Command Palette including many more markup operations, a number of toggle settings, and view options.

• Add ShortCut Keys to the Web Lookup links in Link Dialog
  The link dialog now has shortcut keys for the Search on Web (alt-s) and Search and Link (alt-l) buttons in the Link Dialog to allow for better hands free operation of these two operations.

• Add Preview And Sidebar Width to Window Presets
  The Sidebar Window drop down now allows for setting the preview and sidebar panel widths in addition to a Window size.

• Update Ace Editor to v1.5
  Updated to latest Ace Editor version (1.5.1). Several small additional tweaks to the markdown editor behavior for the editor.

• Fix: Format PipeTable with Line Breaks in Header
  Fix issue where line breaks (via <br>) in Pipe Table headers was breaking the formatter and resulted in not being able to format the table or edit it in the Table editor. The change now formates based on the full single line instead of the individual line lengths which - assuming the table width is not too wide - will still nicely format a table even with linebreaks. (#959)

• Fix: GridTable with leading Spaces in multi-line Cells
  Fix issue where multi-line cells in a grid table would strip leading spaces resulting in potentially lost markdown formatting. (#961)

• Fix: GridTable white space issues
  Fix issue where white space is is not cleaned up properly when deleting lines from a cell in a gridtable. (#962)

• Fix: Preview not rendering first Mermaid Diagram
  Fixed issue where entering a first Mermaid diagram into a page will not render until the page or tab is fully refreshed. This is due to the way MM caches the page and only replaces content, so when Mermaid is added after the page is loaded the script was not available to transform Mermaid charts. Added logic to explicitly check for Mermaid script and refresh page if not found. (#960)

• Fix: Display full Git Error Messages for Commit and Push Operations
  Change display of error messages so the full message is displayed instead of the status bar only message which is often truncated. Display a message box instead so the full error can be captured. Important due to the new Git Security safe.directory features that require (git config --global --add safe.directory <path>)

Breaking Changes

• Recommend a full Uninstall/Reinstall
  The updated Roslyn support in version 2.5.5 and later changes a number of runtime dependencies and it's recommended that if you were running a pre-2.5.5 version you completely uninstall Markdown Monster and reinstall in order to clean the installation folder of old dependencies.

• Razor Support removed for Code Snippet Templates
  Razor language support has been removed from the Snippets addin as the new C# script syntax supports similar functionality for scripting. Razor has been problematic and adds a host of dependencies and inhibit future migration to .NET 6.0. To migrate you can move your scripts to the Handlebars style C# syntax.

2.5

May 10th, 2022

• Command Palette (ctrl-shift-p)
  You now have a command palette that lets you search for most operations and apply them. There's a searchbox in the Windows title bar, where you can type commands to find and execute them. While this doesn't replace native shortcuts it provides for additional discovery of available commands and options.
  commands are still being added but most common functionality is available now

• Folder Browser Markdown Preview Modes
  Added a Folder Browser configuration switch FolderBrowser.MarkdownPreviewMode that lets you choose between the previous EditorPreview mode that displays a transitory document that is closed when another document is accessed unless the document has been changed, or the new HtmlPreview mode which displays the rendered Html view. Preview mode is triggered by a single click in the Folder browser, while double click (or Open in Editor) opens the document as a normal fully editable document.

• Improved Document Loading
  Updated the document load sequence to improve performance and consistency loading documents. Most performance gains can be seen around navigation from the folder browser which reduces extra document open/close operations by now reusing tabs in some situations. Overall better performance and less document load flicker.

• Improved Preview Document Loading in Folder Browser When clicking at editable documents in the Folder browser, documents are initially displayed in Preview Mode which is a transient tab that disappears until a change is made or - now - you click into the preview mode document. Improved how these tabs are created and they are now reused to provide quicker and much smoother navigation of Markdown documents.

• Clicking into Preview Document now switches to Full Document Previously preview document tabs required changing text in the document to trigger becoming a 'normal', full document. Now, clicking into the documentis all it takes to make it a full, non-transitory tab.

• Improved Markdown List UI on Toolbar
  Added support for Checkbox Lists. The 3 list options now show on drop down with the main button still adding a plain list as before. The three options are: Standard List, Numbered List, Checkbox List. Also improved handling of single line selections or no selections on line which now always add the list operator to the front of the line unlike before at the cursor position.

• Remove Leading White space on Extra Markdown Features Menu
  This option on the Extra Features Dropdown strips all common leading white space from a multi-line selection. This is useful for stripping off white space from code pasted from a code editor that has indentation or other text that might be otherwise indented. Removes white space that is common to all lines of text. (then again for code use alt-c code pasting do this and fencing automatically)

• Sticky Search Subfolders for Folder Browser File Searching
  The subfolder option for inline and explicit search pane searches is now sticky via a FolderBrowser.SearchInSubFolders configuration setting. Once updated it's remembered across MM sessions. #934

• Add Drag and Drop Links from Favorites
  You can now drag favorites into a document and link to the file in the same way you can for the Folder Browser. Not super practical unless the favorite link is relative to the current file or project.

• WebLog Custom Fields Context Menu
  Added a Custom Fields context menu which draws values from a user defined menu of custom weblog post values (such as mt_githuburl, mt_location, mt_date) etc. These are typically user defined values that have special meaning on the server, but can be painful to remember if you're using them for custom values. You can now define any custom keys in the Weblog configuration as WeblogConfig.CustomFieldNames.

• Make Spell Underlining Stylable
  Add logic to allow customizing the way the spell check highlighting looks via editor-user-extesions.css and the .ace_marker-layer .misspelled style. Allows changing colors, thickness etc. as other page elements. This was previously hardcoded in the custom spell check logic MM uses.

• Fix: Cleanup Folder Browser Markdown Document Navigation
  Fixed several issues related to document navigation in the Folder browser that resulted in overly janky document opening and occasionally double opened documents.

• Fix: Folder Browser Double Click Flashes and Occasional Load Failures
  Fix issues related to double clicking in the folder browser that occasionally would cause documents to double load or fail to load and display a blank document.

• Fix: Non-intended Drag and Drop Operations
  Fix problem where slight mouse movements while clicking would trigger drag and drop operations that could cause accidental file moves. Widened drag minimums and fixed location pinning that was off and previously resulted in over eager drag operations.

• Fix: Html Edit/Format Table Detection Failing
  Fixed issue where Edit and Format Table context menu choices were not working when trying to open the Table editor. #932

• Fix: Table Editor with Pipe char in Pipe and Grid Tables
  Fix bug where editing or formatting a Pipe or Grid Table that contains escaped pipe characters - ie. \|- would create additional columns rather than capturing the pipe character. Fixed. #933

• Fix: MM won't launch if an older WebView Runtime is installed
  MM by default won't launch if an older WebView runtime is installed and prompt for re-installing the latest WebView runtime. Usually this is not a problem but in some cases an older version may be installed and the app should be allowed to run (such as when running Canary builds). You can now override this behavior via a System.IgnoreWebViewVersionMismatch=true configuration setting.

• Fix: Toggle External to Preview Browser
  Fix issue where the internal preview would not display when toggling from external to internal previewer. Previously you had to manually toggle the Previewer's visibility. Now external -> internal properly shows the internal previewer activated.

• Fix: Footnote Link Navigation in Previewer
  Fix issue with clicking on Footnote links and references not navigating the document to the footnote. Fixed. #937

2.4

March 10th, 2022

• You Tube Embedding Window
  You can now embed YouTube videos into a document using the YouTube Widget on the toolbar. You can paste a YouTube Url (watch, embed or shortcut), preview the video, set a title and default resolution, then embed it into the page as an HTML fragment. The HTML is formatted to auto-size both horizontally and vertically adjusted to the width of the document.

• Twitter Tweet Embedding Information
  MM doesn't include special UI to embed Tweets into your content as Twitter provides an easy way to pick up ready to paste HTML that you can paste into a Markdown document. However to make this process more discoverable we've added a shortcut Tweet toolbar button in the Extension Tags dropdown of the toolbar. This button links to a help topic that describes the two steps to create an HTML widget on Twitter and paste it into markdown.

• Updated Gist Embedding Addin
  Although external, this add in is used by quite a few people. The addin has been updated with a few UI updates to make it quicker and easier to use. You can now also copy a Gist id or script tag for existing Gists, delete Gists. Save to and Load From Gist also have a host of updates to make it easier to access these options from the Gist Listing view.

• Added Markdown HtmlEncode and UrlEncode Shortcuts
  You can now easily HtmlEncode a block of text or UrlEncode a value using shortcuts on the Extended Markdown Operations dropdown from the toolbar.

• Alt-X Shortcut for dropping down Extended Markdown Features
  There's new Alt-X (default) shortcut key that drops down the Extended Markdown features from the toolbar for quick access. This menu has things like Upper/Lower Case, bolditalic, HtmlEncode, UrlEncode etc. Also updated the documentation for Markdown Monster Shortcut keys.

• Improved Markdown Quote Handling (ctrl-q)
  Quote handling (> content) now better supports single line or no selections, prepending the quote mark at the beginning of the line. MM now also checks for already quoted lines and doesn't double quote any longer.

• Command Line Opening of Files using filename:lineno Syntax
  In addition to the --lineno command line switch you can now also use :lineno at the end of a filename to open a file at that line. Example: c:\temp\test.md:22. The individual file lineno overrides the --lineno parameter which works only against the first opened file.

• Support For Better Html Document Previews
  There's now better raw HTML document editing support (ie. .html files) in Markdown Monster as previews now show related resource content. You get many of the same live preview benefits that are also available with Markdown documents. Images, styles, scripts and other related assets now correctly load in the previewer for HTML documents via an inject <base> tag that points back to the document's host folder. #907

• Addins: Fix Addin Repository Urls
  Due to changes at GitHub related to branch names etc. we've had to change the way addins report their default Urls. The new Urls require providing a branch name (ie. /tree/main etc. suffix to repo). This is required since we can no longer assume a master or main branch.
  This is a breaking change - the new addin repository Urls break old applications so for older v2 versions the Addin Manager is broken. Please update to latest.

• Addins: Add AdditionalDropdownMenuItems to AddinMenuItem
  You can now add additional menu items to the Addin drop down menu on the Toolbar. This allows addins to be more obvious about features available by the addin in one place, in addition to optional integration into the Main Menu (which requires a little more work).

• Addins: New OnApplicationInitialized() Handler
  This handler replaces the OnModelLoaded() handled which more clearly identifies the purpose of this handler. This method is now set up to be the default Addin configuration method where the default Id, name and menu item configuration is placed instead of in OnApplicationStart(). The problem with OnApplicationStart() is that it fires before there is any app context - no Window, no Dispatcher, no Model. OnApplicationInitialized() ensures the Window is instantiated, a Dispatcher is available and the AppModel is available.

• Addins: Updated dotnet new and Visual Studio Addin Project Templates
  We've updated both types of templates in line with the changes for OnApplicationInitialized() and cleaned up the templates and added additional comments to the generated addin and configuration classes.

• Updated: Mermaid and MathMl now work without requiring Allow Script Rendering
  These two RenderExtensions provide diagram and math equation rendering into Markdown now work without explicitly requiring the AllowRenderScriptTags option to be set as they don't actually require JavaScript code inside of the rendered Markdown body any longer. They are still disabled by default but can now be enabled via just the UseMermaid and UseMathematics configuration settings. A restart is required for changes to these values as the RenderExtensions need to be reloaded.

• Fix: Re-enabled the Microsoft DocFx Markdown Parser
  We temporarily had to remove the Microsoft DocFx parser, due to a dependency version conflict with the MarkDig parser. Now that MarkDig versions have been re-synced to the latest versions the DocFx Parser is available again from the Markdown Parser dropdown on the toolbar.

• Fix: Focus with New and Non-Existing Documents from Command Line
  Fixed focus issues for opening a new or non-existing document from the command line. Focus now starts in the editor.

• Fix: Presentation Mode preserves Folder Browser Sidebar Visibility
  When you use Presentation Mode to toggle between edit and presentation modes, MM now remembers and restores the preview state of the left folder browser sidebar.

• Fix: GridTable LineFeed Issues
  Fix Grid table edit and format table inputs when table cells have empty lines. These empty lines are no longer stripped. Fix extra linefeed at end of generated GridTable output/paste operations. #901

• Fix: markdownmonster: Protocol Handler with text
  Fix bug where the markdownmonster:untitled.base64:<data> handler was not assigning the document data passed into the newly opened document. Fixed.

• Fix: GridTable Parsing with Back to Back Tables
  Fix Grid Tables when tables are butted up against each other without separating lines. Note: This is legal but the preview won't actually render it and most Markdown parsers fail to render this correctly. Although the editor now supports this functionality, it's best to use a blank line between two tables to ensure it renders correctly regardless of parser. #904

• Fix Mermaid Rendering
  Fix Mermaid rendering for certain Mermaid content by Html Encoding the body to render. Previously the unencoded text would fail to render correctly. Encoding is applied only the mermaid sections, not the raw Html <div> which is used as is meaning that user is responsible for encoding. #911

2.3

January 14th, 2021

• Support for Long Path Names (if enabled in Windows)
  Added improved support for long path names in MM via manifest setting that allows you to open and save documents and assets with paths longer than the Windows MAX_PATH (255 chars). It now also works for many of the external application integrations. For this to work, Long Path Names have to be enabled in Windows (10/11) via registry or group policy setting.

• Improved Document Load Time
  We've improved the way editor and preview documents get loaded, which now load faster, with less flicker and without the occasional brief document load error page displayed.

• Add File Updated and Created to Folder Browser Tooltip
  Files and folders now display both created and updated dates in the File and Folder Browser.

• Document Tab ToolTip now includes File Information
  The document tab tooltip now displays file information including file size and updated and creation times, using similar format to what's used for tooltips in the Folder Browser.

• Move Symbol Configuration for Italic and Soft Line Breaks Characters
  Moved the Symbol configuration that allows you to specify what symbols to use for italic (* or _) and Soft Line Breaks ( or \) into the main Markdown configuration so it's visible in the interactive editor. Previously these two values were nested in a sub key below the Markdown configuration and not visible in the editor. These symbols are used by the Toolbar/Shortcut insertion operations.

• Improved Drag and Drop Operations in the Folder Browser
  Updated drag and drop logic that affects initial drag state activation to be less sensitive resulting in fewer accidental drag operations. Also fixed various selection and drop issues as well as better supporting dropping shell files into the Folder Browser.

• Fix: Folder and File Visibility when a Filter is Set
  Fix issue where new files or folders added would not respect the search filters and show up regardless of the filter settings.

• Fix: Lockups on opening Documents
  Fixed issue with lockups when opening documents in some situations such as after search, dragging items.

• Fix: Document Title Display with Full Path when switching from Preview Fix an issue when switching from a Preview document to an edited document where the tab title would display the path even though there's no duplicate item. Correct behavior is to display only the filename when a single file with that name is open.

2.2

November 23rd, 2021

• Import from JSON to Markdown Table
  You can now import JSON object arrays as Markdown tables from file or the clipboard. Field names are mapped to headers values as row content. An optional field exclusion list can be applied.

• Move Table Rows Up and Down
  You can now move table rows in the Table Editor, up and down via context menu or alt-up and alt-down.

• Keyboard Navigation for Common Table Editor Cell and Row Operations
  You can now use keyboard navigation for moving rows up and down (alt-up, alt-down) and moving columns left and right (alt-left, alt-right). You can also insert rows above and below using (alt-shift-up, alt-shift-down).

• Copy To Clipboard for Markdown Tables in Table Editor
  The Markdown Table Editor has a new Copy button to copy the currently active table in the editor to Markdown and the clipboard. This allows using the editor for easy pasting of Markdown Tables into other applications.

• mmCli cleanup-webview Command to clear WebView Environment
  Added command line helper to clear out the WebView Environment that MM uses. The environment is private and separate from global settings, and only used for MM's local rendering of generated content.

• Spellchecking: Look up on Web
  The spell checking context menu now has an option to Lookup on Web when a spell checking error is found. This is useful if you have no match in the list of suggestions and need to find out correct spelling. Opens Search page in your specified search engine.

• Add Neeva and Brave to configurable Search Engines for Lookups
  Add the Neeva and Brave search engines to the list of supported search engines for various lookup operations. Look up operations are available for finding and embedding URLs, and the spell checker for example.

• Copy Favorites Path to Clipboard on Favorites Context Menu
  You can now copy the current favorite item's path to the clipboard from the Favorites Context Menu.

• Command Snippets: Warm up C# Compiler
  If you're using snippets that contain C# code (Expressions or Razor) there's now a configuration option that allows preloading the C# compiler to speed up first compiled snippet operation. Also fix code focus delay issue with Snippet insertion.

• Fix: Update RelativePath Processing
  Fix exceptions in Relative Path creation used for dropped and pasted files and images. Fix issue where invalid paths would cause a hard failure due to Path object exceptions.

• Fix: Favorites Intra Section Drag and Drop
  Fix issue where dragging a Favorite in section would not 'stay' in the new drop location and revert after short delay.

• Fix: Control Tab Focus Handling
  Fix various issues with Control Tab locking the UI and not focusing the cursor. Fixes Ctrl-Tab and Click focus with cursor becoming active in editor for each.

• Fix: PDF Generation Intermediary HTML File Name
  Fixed the intermediary HTML filename used when generating PDF files. Previously the HTML file generated was the same name as the PDF file, which could cause conflicts if the HTML file already existed prior to generation. Added __ prefix to the temp file.

• Fix: SnagIt Image Capture Embedding
  Fix issue with SnagIt image embedding from the Screen Capture add-in. Previously, save operation failed silently. Fixed.

• Fix: Physical Path Formatting for Links and Images
  When embedding physical file locations into Markdown (in untitled documents mainly or if referencing non-relative locations) paths previously where using Windows style syntax with forward slashes. This worked previously but started failing recently with the WebView renderer. All paths - both physical and relative - are now embedded using URL style forward slashes even for Windows paths.

• Update: Log more Exception Data
  Exceptions now log both the top level and base exception to provide a little extra info on failures.

2.1

October 12th, 2021

• Output Generation icons on main Toolbar
  Added PDF, Print and HTML Output icons to the toolbar to make these features more discoverable and more easily accessible with a single click.

• Basic Syntax Detection for Pasted Text into Empty Untitled Documents When you paste content into a new untitled document, MM now tries to detect syntax and automatically sets the editor's syntax to this mode. This only applies if the document is empty otherwise the syntax is sticky.

• Remember Table Embedding Mode in Table Editor
  When you embed a table using the Table Editor window, your last selection is now preserved in a configuration setting Editor.TablePasteMode.

• Set File Sort Order in Folder Browser
  The context menu in the folder browser now has an option to set the file sort order to Name, Date Ascending and Date Descending. The file order setting is tracked via sticky configuration in FolderBrowser.FileOrder.

• Optional File Browser File Tooltips
  You can now optionally enable a new FolderBrowser.ShowToolTips configuration option to show file information when hovering over files and folders. The tooltip shows the file's full name, parent folder, file size and last write date.

• PDF specific Preview Theme
  Added a Pdf Output Preview Theme that can be used when printing output to PDF. This theme is specifically designed to work around the differences in PDF output which include printing code with non-syntax coloring, and special font handling in order for code snippets to display properly. You can copy and customize this theme as necessary.

• PDF Output now lets you set the Theme
  When you create PDF output via the Save To -> Save to PDF dialog, you can now select the theme that is used to render the document. Due to limitations of the PDF rendering we recommend you use the printing specific Pdf Output theme which is the default, but any theme will work and you can create your own custom themes for printing.

• Change: Markdown Link Rendering
  Changed Markdown link rendering to remove underscore using regular display to make it easier to read links that might have underscores in them. Links now display without link underscore, and only show the underscore when hovering to indicate that the link can be navigated (via Ctrl-Click). There's now also a tooltip to notify you of ctrl-click behavior.

• Update: PDF Generation Tools
  Update to latest tool version of wkhtml2pdf for PDF generation which fixes a number of small rendering quirks in the PDF generation engine. Also added some rudimentary support for emoji rendering in PDF documents since that seems a common theme.

• Update: Markdown Monster Addin Templates
  Both the Visual Studio and dotnet new Markdown Monster Addin templates have now been updated to support v2 Addin projects. The addin interfaces have changed to mostly Task based async, to make it easier to interact with the async document functionality required for many editor interactions. If you need to update a v1 project to v2, you will need to convert the main addin entry points to updated async signatures (Task or async Task) instead of the old void method types.

• Fix: Alt Key Handling
  Fixed a number of issues around alt key handling. Fixed issue where some editor commands like alt-shift and alt-ctrl selection weren't working. This is due to the custom menu activation handling which requires alt plus a small delay to trigger now vs. simultaneous key press for alt key chords. Editor alt chord commands are expected to be simultaneous press operations to work. This fixes block selections, block column selections and a host of other alt key based editor operations.

• Fix: Favorites Tree Data Entry
  Fix various issues with the Favorites list where entering a new item would add two items and focus would switch unpredictably. You can now also navigate the list with the keyboard with Enter opening the item with editor focus and Space opening without editor focus.

• Fix: Allow Render Scripts State Switches
  Fix issue where switching the allow render state flag on the menu or in settings wouldn't affect the actual rendering and still allow rendering scripts and iframe when rendered. Fixed binding for menu, and updated the refresh mechanism so that open documents are updated with the new setting and refreshed (from menu update).

• Fix: Startup Menu Folder Opening
  Fix issue Startup Screen folder opening issues where clicking on the folder icon next to the file, would not reliably open the Folder Browser. Fixed.

• Fix: Tabs not auto-activating when loading from CLI
  When loading files from the command line files would not open properly in the editor, with tabs opened but not activated and showing an empty preview. Fixed.

• Fix: Search Settings in Settings Dialog
  Fix issue with Search Settings entry which was hanging up and not immediately refreshing the entered text. Reduced delay and ensured that operation occurs in dispatched mode to see the change.

• Fix: WordPress Publishing Thumbnail Image Failure
  Fix issue with the WordPress publishing mechanism where if thumbnails are published the addin would fail due to a data type error.

• Fix: EnableBulletAutoComplete
  Fix this setting so it works on initial document load. Previously the setting only worked after the document was 're-activated'. Fixed.

• Fix: Edit CenteredMode Pixel Width in Menu
  Fixed focus issue in the Centered Mode editor document width that determines how wide the editor column to actually edit is. This allows creating of white space around text if the size of the overall edit pane is larger. Fixed issue where focus could not be set easily in the menu option, which made it hard to edit the value. Fixed.

• Fix: Configuration Editor Click to Jump to Json Editor Links
  Several configuration options that edit a collection of items, have links in the configuration editor. These links now properly open the JSON configuration file and jump to the appropriate section in the JSON document. Also fixed focus issue for JSON activation by closing the visual editor.

• Fix: Remember last document location in Recent Documents
  Last document location was no longer saving when documents were closed (due to async changes). Value is now picked up again before saving and applied when recent documents are opened.

• Fix: Adding links as Link Collections
  Fixed issue where Add Link Collection in the Paste Link dialog was failing and not producing a link.

2.0.5 - Official release of v2.0

July 20th, 2021 • Release Blog Post

• Use WebView2 and Chromium for all Web Rendering including Editor
  Markdown Monster now uses a Chromium based browser for all Web rendering including the Editor, the Preview, the Table Editor, Code Windows, and Browser Dialogs. Previously only the Preview was optionally enabled by using the Chromium Preview addin. The Addin is no longer needed as all content always uses the Chromium engine. This improves rendering fidelity and also provides better responsiveness due to asynchronous rendering of content which allows for larger content to be displayed and synced while typing.

• Table Editor Improvements
  With Chromium rendering a number of odd IE browser bugs are fixed that affected navigation and selection in the old version. Table Editor can now Move Columns to the left or right.

• 64 bit Application
  With the removal of the IE based Web Browser control, Markdown Monster can now run as 64 bit application again. 32 bit mode is still possible on 32 bit systems as well.

• Allow Swapping Editor and Preview Location
  You can now swap the editor and preview location via a new View->Swap Editor and Preview Location menu option and a via Editor/Preview Splitter Context Menu.

• New Splitter Context Menu
  Added a new context menu that displays options for swapping editor and preview, entering presentation mode and toggling the preview display.

• Track Active Document in Folder Browser
  As a heavily requested feature, we've added support for optional document tracking in the folder browser. Using the FolderBrowser.TrackDocumentInFolderBrowser configuration switch (also via a toggle button in the Folder Browser) any time you change the document the Folder Browser navigates to that file.

• Improved Folder Browser Navigation
  Folder browser navigation now shows previews for most text type documents in 'inactive' mode that is temporary until the next document is accessed. Documents become 'active' once you edit the document or double click to explicitly open for editing. Single click now also previews any non-edit formats externally, like PDFs, Office docs, etc. Executables open selected in Explorer but are not executed. Drag and Drop start operations are now less twitchy.

• Move Support Binaries out of Root Folder
  Support binaries are now moved out of the root folder into a BinSupport sub folder to avoid ending up on the User's path and causing naming conflicts. Only applications that should be visible on the user path now are: MarkdownMonster, mm and mmcli.

• Make Settings HelpText Selectable
  You can now select the help text associated with a configuration setting in the Settings window. This allows picking up URLs and other fixed values more easily. (#817)

• Dev: Add Debug Editor and Preview Template Paths
  Added configurable Editor and Preview Template paths that are configurable and allow pointing the template folders to the original development folder, rather than the deployed applications' folders. This allows making changes to the Html/Web templates without having to recompile code. Settings are System.DebugEditorHtmlTemplatesPath and System.DebugPreviewHtmlTemplatesPath and they default to .\Editor and .\PreviewThemes which are fixed up at runtime.

• Fix: Remove WebViewPreviewer Addin from 1.x Installs
  Added logic to remove the WebViewPreviewer Addin from v1 which throws an error. If found this addin is now explicitly removed at startup since the code has moved inline.

• Fix: PDF Generation Errors Fix issue where repeated output to PDF would report an error for PDF generation even when the PDF was generated.

• Fix: PDF Code Snippet Background
  Fix issue where the PDF output for code snippets was not properly applying the background color. Works in HTML but not for the PDF generator. Added custom print style sheet overrides for pre > code style explicitly to match highlightjs color theme.

• Fix: Folder Browser Click and DoubleClick Behavior
  Fix issues where clicking would not allow keyboard navigation after click, folder opening wasn't opening folders on first click, and preview operations could hang.

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