Rubenerd

Here’s something cool I didn’t realise. With the table extension in the redcarpet markdown parser, you can write tables thusly:

| Header1 | Header2 | Header3 |
|---------|---------|---------|
| Cell1   | Cell2   | Cell3   |
| Cell34  | Cell5   | Cell6   |

When interpreted, the table is translated into the one below, complete with proper <th>, <thead> and <tbody> tags. I’ve noticed even people hardcoding HTML don’t usually bother doing this!

Header1	Header2	Header3
Cell1	Cell2	Cell3
Cell4	Cell5	Cell6

You can enable it in your Jekyll config script as below, making sure NOT to use tabs!

markdown: redcarpet
redcarpet:
    extensions: ['tables']

It’s a nice idea, and certainly great for quick mockups. Given Markdown doesn’t let you define inline styles though (important for web feeds), I’ll probably stick to generating them manually.