# Recommendations This page lists a few opinionated recommendations for Sphinx plugins to use in your documentation along with Furo. All these plugins work well with Furo-based Sphinx documentation, but they are not inherently tied to Furo. [MyST (Markedly Structured Text)][MyST] : This project enables writing documentation with Markdown in Sphinx[^using-markdown]. This is achieved by making well-thought-out extensions to the CommonMark Specification, which make it as capable as reStructuredText. In case you're wondering if that works well... this documentation is written using MyST. Markdown is a significantly more popular markup format than reStructuredText. This means that it's likely that potential contributors/developers on the project are significantly more familiar with Markdown than reStructuredText. MyST gives you the best of both worlds -- simplicity and familiarity of Markdown with the extensibility power of reST. [sphinxext-opengraph] : This project automagically adds Open Graph meta tags to your site's generated HTML. The Open Graph protocol is used by social media websites to determine how to present a page when a link is posted, and by search engines as a criterion toward ranking. [sphinx-inline-tabs] : This project provides a straightforward way to introduce tabbed content within your documentation. This is useful for instructions specific to something about the end user (like their OS, or preferred language, etc). This is a great way to organise complex bits of documentation without major trouble. Disclaimer: I am the creator and the primary maintainer of sphinx-inline-tabs. [sphinx-autobuild] : This project provides a live-reloading server, that rebuilds the documentation and refreshes any open pages automatically when changes are saved. This enables a much shorter feedback loop which can help boost productivity when writing documentation. Furo's development workflow is based on [uses this project](contributing/workflow.md#local-development-server). Disclaimer: I am the primary maintainer of sphinx-autobuild. [sphinx-copybutton] : This project adds a convenient copy button to code blocks. This is a subtle but effective user experience improvement when there are code snippets that a user might wish to copy from (examples, sample code etc). In addition to the above, a shoutout to the [Executable Books] project which maintains many useful [Sphinx extensions][ebp-extensions] including some listed above. [^using-markdown]: MyST addresses all the concerns that have been raised when arguing against [Using Markdown for Technical Documentation][dont-use-markdown], which really only leaves us with the good bits. :) [MyST]: https://myst-parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [sphinx-autobuild]: https://github.com/executablebooks/sphinx-autobuild#readme [sphinx-copybutton]: https://github.com/executablebooks/sphinx-copybutton#readme [sphinx-inline-tabs]: https://github.com/pradyunsg/sphinx-inline-tabs#readme [sphinxext-opengraph]: https://github.com/wpilibsuite/sphinxext-opengraph [executable books]: https://executablebooks.org [ebp-extensions]: https://github.com/executablebooks/?q=sphinx [dont-use-markdown]: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/mar/15/dont-use-markdown-for-technical-docs/