I was sorely missing the preview Markdown feature from Textmate in vim. However, in vim I am just a ! removed from the command line, so I wrote a little Ruby snippet that takes a Markdown file, uses Bluecloth to convert it to html, and opens the result in a browser. Then I created a mapping in my .vimrc file that calls the ruby snippet with the current file, and presto, feature implemented.
I have had a love/hate relationship with vim over the years, but since I now regularly work in three different environments (Mac, Unix and (shudder) Windows), having a common editor with a common configuration is rapidly proving itself to be a win.
