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Writing DEV articles in VSCode

Paula Santamaría on November 24, 2019

When I started writing this weekly blog on dev.to, like 3 months ago, I didn't know what tools to use, so I just turned to the one I use and like t...
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Almenon
  1. Pretty cool!
  2. If you have chrome you can also turn on enhanced spell check, or you can use grammarly.
  3. In windows you can use windows+period to activate the emoji keyboard, or Command+Control+Spacebar for mac, or control+dot for ubuntu 18+
  4. Seems like a bit of a heavyweight solution but I could definitely see that being useful
  5. Yep, useful feature for cutting down on extension bloat. 👍

Overall I think I'll stick with dev.to but I like the idea :)

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Paula Santamaría

Thank you!
I actually do use Grammarly once I copy everything to the browser. I tried an unofficial extension on VSCode but didn't work well for me.
And yes, at first I felt like using git would be too much, but since I'm using VSCode for everything else its just convenient.

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Rémy 🤖

Shameless plug here but I started working on this and I think it's a pretty appropriate continuation

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Paula Santamaría

That's awesome, Rémy! I wanted to build a CD pipeline in Gitlab to do exactly that, but haven't had the time yet. Maybe I'll just try your solution with GitHub Actions.

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Rémy 🤖

Fantastic! Tell me what you think, it's still a bit rough for now

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mwolfaardt • Edited

Great article, what do you use as your publishing platform? Gatsbyjs, Hugo?

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mwolfaardt

Hahaha thanks, should of used a plugin to check this comment

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Ryan Sullivan

You're

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C.S. Rhymes

Some great tips here. Thanks.

I’ve been writing the content in google docs then copying and pasting into vs code and then adding code snippets and converting to markdown. This seems a much more efficient workflow!

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Alexis Ortiz Ojeda

Hey Paula thank you for the tips! Are there any tools you tend to refer to in your article writing process to speed up the process? Such as tools for code snippets or screenshots? Thanks!

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Ajmal Hassan

There is this extension called Code Snap for VSCode that takes beautiful screenshot of your code.

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Paula Santamaría

I don't normally take code screenshots for my articles, I prefer using the markdown option that looks great on DEV and also allows other people to copy the code examples. Here are some examples by markdownguide.org.

I know my cover image looks like I took a screenshot in VSCode, but it's actually designed using Adobe Illustrator 😂, because I couldn't find a way to use extensions like Code Snap to take a screenshot so big :/ For normal sized screenshots works fine though.

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Almenon

If you're on windows I highly recommend using Sharex for screen captures. Super convenient and all sorts of features.

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Francisco Quintero 🇨🇴

This workflow could be even more powerful if it could be possible to post to DEV via VSCode itself.

🤔🤘🏽

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Paula Santamaría

Absolutely! I wanted to use Gitlab/Azure pipelines to achieve that, but I haven't had the time to try yet. @xowap did it with GitHub actions, in case you want to check that out.
And there's also an unofficial DEV Community extension for vscode that allows you to publish articles, but I haven't try that either.

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Luka Vidaković

Great tips! Looks like it's time to modernize my process 😅

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Paula Santamaría

Thank you, Luka!

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Eric Ahnell

I've been an "inliner" until reading your post. VSCode from now on!

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benjamincodes

Whoa that's super cool...I must say I love ur tips...am getting them right away

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Paula Santamaría

Glad I could help!

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Alex Antra

I actually once looked to see if I could do this. Thanks !

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Paula Santamaría

Happy to help!