Some people have asked for a javascript formatting toolbar above the post textarea. Here is my variant. Just copy the below text to your free nodelet settings. 

<script type="text/javascript" defer><!--
function edittoolbar_help(){window.alert('Separate paragraphs with "<p
+>", put "<c>".."<\x2fc>" around code or data (linebreaks inside it ar
+e taken literally) and you\x27ll be okay.  Don\x27t forget to check i
+f the preview looks right.');}
(function(){
var d=document,c="createElement",i="appendChild";
var t=d.getElementsByTagName("textarea")[0];
function b(x){ t.parentNode.insertBefore(x,t) };
if(t){
var l=d[c]("a"),m=d[c]("img");
m.src="http://www.math.bme.hu/~ambrus/pu/edittoolbar";
m.border=0;
l.href="javascript:edittoolbar_help()";
l[i](m);b(l);b(d[c]("br"));
}
})();
//--></script>

[download]

If people like this, it could even be made an official perlmonks patch to aid some new monks which you can then disable by a setting. Of course in that case the image has to be copied to the perlmonks server.

Update: see also Free Nodelet Hack: a graphical editor for composing nodes, PerlMonks Editor.

In reply to Javascript formatting toolbar for perlmonks by ambrus

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.