Byword might be your text editor of choice thanks to its choice of colors in white or black shades, the intuitive and consistently convenient formatting pop-over, or its writer-esque text preview that lets you focus on just a few lines of text. If you’re not yet a convert for Byword’s good looks alone, Markdown support has been added under the hood for the many of us who prefer the popular, readable language over tag-numbing HTML code. Byword’s latest update to 1.2 brings Markdown and more, all reviewed just after the break.

Before we delve into asterisks and brackets, Byword continues to shed skin in its latest update, removing unnecessary border chrome in hopes of producing a simple, visually tasteful text editor free of distractions. Frankly, I can’t complain about the overall slimmer, yet handsome stylings the developer has chosen for Byword.

Onto the main course, it isn’t just Markdown that has been added to great effect, but Fletcher’s MultiMarkdown. Yes, this means you all important bloggers can do all sorts of cool things such as sizes images, produce LaTeX functions using Byword’s legible font choices, and the end results can be shaped into an HTML document worthy of your static-serving website. Byword can preview text with a simple keyboard stroke, and if Markdown isn’t your fancy then you still have the option to write in plain text. I motion for a small update that will give me the option to default new documents for Markdown, but you can select the format you choose to write in from the menubar.

If you want to write in Markdown using an app that’s built specifically for a writer who appreciates a well designed writing tool, Byword will easily meet that standard. If you haven’t yet given Byword a shot, it’s $9.99 in the Mac App Store.