Suggestion : Link to markup help

Question

Hi,

Though the link to editing help appears when posting a question. But in other cases when commenting or replying, the link is not visible.

Those who have been using the markup for sometime might not need to view the reference at all. But new ones like me do need it time and again. Now on my system I have bookmarked it but when I am accessing SO from some other system which is quite often, I really get stuck.

Then I have to click on Ask question button in a new tab so that the side bar help can appear with link to full reference in it. From there I click on full reference and read about the markup.

I think its a good idea if link to markup help appears in case of commenting and reply too.

Or its link can be made permanent part of every page. Like in the lower portion of the page along with about | faq | blog | podcast | legal | advertising info | contact us | feedback always welcome

Thanks

Answer 1

In the answer box, right at the bottom of any open question (or in any post that you are editing), there's a question mark that links to editing help. Click it to go there. Then the only problem is closed questions where you're commenting, in which case it's such a small amount of support (just inline links, emphasis, and code formatting) that I'm not certain it's really necessary to add yet another link.

If something is a common reference utility that you know you need to look up often, I also recommend, if possible, just bookmarking it on your machine instead of having to jump through hoops. For example, if the link was on the bottom footer and you were adding a comment on a closed question that has 30 answers, that's a lot of scrolling you have to do to get that reference. Your browser bookmark navigation will let you keep your page position as well as being generally faster. This is advice for reference pages in general, not Stack Overflow specifically. Just a suggestion, though.