This is VERY hacky, but that was kind of the point I was making. Hack together what you need! Here you go: http://pastebin.com/sPmPsCgY

Edit: Safari reloads the existing tab, so set the default browser to Safari if you want that.

that is quite clever. works here too. any idea how you could convince firefox to reload the tab rather than creating a new one?

You can use AppleScript to accomplish that. See for example https://github.com/mharju/vim-fiddle/blob/master/template/fi... for hints on how to do it.

thank you. and thanks to alex too ;)

vim-instant-markdown is an excellent plugin if you edit a lot of markdown content.

https://github.com/suan/vim-instant-markdown