// the find
sofish/pen
enjoy live editing (+markdown)
Pen is a minimal contenteditable-based WYSIWYG editor with optional Markdown shortcut support. It wraps the browser's built-in execCommand API into a small toolbar widget. Aimed at developers who want a drop-in inline editor without pulling in a full framework like Quill or TipTap.
No dependencies — the whole thing is a single JS file plus a CSS file, which is genuinely rare in the editor space. Markdown shortcut input (type '### ' to get an h3) works without a separate parse step, which is a nice UX detail. The API is dead simple: one constructor, two lifecycle methods. Bower packaging was ahead of its time for 2013.
Dead project — last commit was 2018 and it's built on execCommand, which MDN marked as deprecated and browsers are actively removing. Any serious use today is a liability. The Markdown export (toMd()) is explicitly marked 'experimental' and produces unreliable output for anything beyond basic formatting. No TypeScript types, no npm package, no test coverage worth mentioning (Travis CI badge is broken). Toolbar is hardcoded to a small set of execCommand verbs with no way to add custom blocks or embed types.