Orbit MD 1.0 is out for Macs with Apple silicon. It’s a desktop app for editing a website’s words and data without touching its design, on sites built with Astro, Gatsby, Next.js or Nuxt whose content is Markdown files in git.
Editing
Each page opens as a form built from the site’s own content rules: text boxes, dates, dropdowns, image pickers and lists, with the writing in a Markdown editor. Orbit checks a page against those rules when you save, so a missing title or a wrong date is caught in Orbit rather than when the site is built. The editor form covers each control.
Publishing
Every page shows whether it’s live, changed or waiting for approval. Saving puts a change on the site’s preview, where it can be checked. Editors ask to publish and approvers publish. Who can approve is set on the site’s git host, so it can’t be got round from inside Orbit. Publishing a page walks through it.
Pricing
Orbit MD is free for one site. Pro is £29, once, for unlimited sites on two computers, and Team packs cover 5, 10 or 25 people. A key is checked once on each computer and then works offline. The details are on the pricing page.
Follow-up releases
1.0.1 and 1.0.2 came out the same day. 1.0.1 checks for git on first run and offers to install Apple’s free developer tools if it’s missing, and explains more clearly when a site can’t be opened. 1.0.2 lets anyone try the demo site freely: changes stay on the computer and publishing is switched off. 1.0.3, the next day, put Orbit’s licence and the notices for the open-source parts it uses inside the app.
Downloads and notes are on GitHub: 1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3.
For a more technical take on this, read Orbit MD 1.0 for developers.