In addition, the syntax is rendered while editing to clearly show the expected result. Headings are larger, emphasized words are italicized, links are underlined, etc.
SimpleMDE began as an improvement of [lepture's Editor project](https://github.com/lepture/editor), but has now taken on an identity of its own. It is bundled with [CodeMirror](https://github.com/codemirror/codemirror) and depends on [Font Awesome](http://fontawesome.io).
CodeMirror is the backbone of the project and parses much of the Markdown syntax as it's being written. This allows us to add styles to the Markdown that's being written. Additionally, a toolbar and status bar have been added to the top and bottom, respectively. Previews are rendered by [Marked](https://github.com/chjj/marked) using GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM).
I originally made this fork to implement FontAwesome 5 compatibility into SimpleMDE. When that was done I submitted a [pull request](https://github.com/sparksuite/simplemde-markdown-editor/pull/666), which has not been accepted yet. This, and the project being inactive since May 2017, triggered me to make more changes and try to put new life into the project.