When comparing Mou vs MWeb, the Slant community recommends Mou for most people. In the question“What are the best Markdown editors for OS X?” Mou is ranked 8th while MWeb is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Mou is:
Mou has word auto-completion (accessed via 'esc') for English words, text transformation such as conversions to uppercase, blockquote or an h1 heading, HTML entities (such as <’s, &’s and spaces) that can be added anywhere in the text and customizable keyboard shortcuts for everything allowing for efficient use of the software's capabilities.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Advanced text editing
Mou has word auto-completion (accessed via 'esc') for English words, text transformation such as conversions to uppercase, blockquote or an h1 heading, HTML entities (such as <’s, &’s and spaces) that can be added anywhere in the text and customizable keyboard shortcuts for everything allowing for efficient use of the software's capabilities.
Pro Full syntax highlighting
Mou provides full syntax highlighting for Markdown. The highlighting can be customized manually or by applying a predefined theme.
Pro Has real-time split-screen preview
Mou is split into two columns. It displays raw Markdown on the left and formatted text on the right. Text on the right will update in near real-time as raw Markdown is written.
Pro Powerful search
Mou can do incremental ("find as you type") pattern matching search. For example, it can find all words that have x as the third letter followed by at least 4 more letters and a line break.
Pro Free beta versions
Mou is available as a free download up until the release of 1.0.
Pro Customizable
The whole editor can be customized using different color schemes and users can create own variations by editing CSS.
Pro Support for CJK characters
Mou supports CJK characters for writing Markdown in Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
Pro Export as HTML or PDF
Markdown can be exported as an HTML or a PDF file. Each export can also be styled by a custom CSS.
Pro Customizable keyboard shortcuts
Mou has keyboard shortcuts for all text manipulation actions allowing for highly efficient use of the software. These shortcuts can also be manually edited to better fit each individual workflow.
Pro Includes optional typewriter keypress sounds
The app includes optional atmospheric typewriter sounds that are triggered with each keypress. These can be enabled in the settings.
Pro Scriptogr.am & Tumblr integration via Dropbox
Mou allows writing and publishing to blogs from within the editor.
Pro Excellent support of LaTeX equations
Math-heavy note takers, look no further. Mweb even supports the basic LaTeX equation labeling and referencing, which you cannot find in any other markdown editor as of early 2018. Library management is another major plus.
Pro Supports publishing to popular web platforms
MWeb can publish Markdown files to various web platforms including (but not limited to) Wordpress, Metaweblog, Evernote, Blogger and Tumblr.
Pro Syntax highlighting in fenced code blocks
MWeb has syntax highlighting for some popular programming languages inside fenced code blocks.
Pro Comes with an iOS app with iCloud sync
Once you are done editing your note on your mac, it's immediately available in your iOS devices, great for checkup anytime as you go.
Pro Drag & drop or paste photos to the editor and display
Supports adding pictures to a Markdown file either through drag-and-drop or by pasting it.
Pro Small but powerful
It has file tree, can post article, can upload pictures, can render in pretty preview themes, and is small and fast.
Pro Supports both its own database and external folders
So you can have a side project stored on its database, and your current notes on external folder, with simple files, that could be share with other apps.
Pro There's a free version, Mweb lite, on Mac OS and iOS
Pro Supports publishing a static blog on FTP
Possible to manage your self-hosted static blog with your own css
.
Pro Tables
Quick insert and editing of tables.
Cons
Con No longer maintained
The latest version was released in 2014, version 1.0 was announced for 2015 but was never released. The app is not compatible with macOS Sierra.
Con Only free until 1.0 release
Once 1.0 is released (still unreleased as of May 2017, release was planned for August 2015), Mou will cost $30. It can currently be pre-ordered for half the price.
Con Text is hard to read on a big screen in full-screen mode
On big screens legibility is pretty bad when entering full-screen mode because the text is not columned nor centered. On smaller screens though, legibility is quite good even on full-screen.
Con Doesn't work as well with non-monospaced fonts
When using a non-monospaced font, the text jiggles around. It can be very annoying since users may not always want to write with a monospaced font.
Con Switching live preview on/off changes the width of text area
Con v1.0 was promised to Indiegogo founders more than a year ago
Safe to say this is dead software at this point.
Con Indie app, possible to be abandoned at anytime
If you like the app, please buy it to make it sustainable.
Con Price become expensive
MWeb used to cost $14.99, and could be bought half the price with promo; but version 3 now costs $20, and the developer would like to go to a subscription plan.
Con No free version
MWeb costs $20.99 and is available on the Mac App Store. There's a free trial available but it's only for 14 days which may not be enough to make a good evaluation of the software before buying.