Embed files that render

A guide page can show a Markdrop file right in the text, working: an interactive HTML page (a prototype, a calculator, a chart) or a zipped static site, a PDF with page controls and zoom, or a video in the docs player. Readers use it without leaving the page.

This calculator is a Markdrop file embedded in this page. Try it:

Each block has a bar with the file's title, its type and size (or length), Full screen and Open on Markdrop. Drag the bar under a page or PDF to make it taller; on a phone it fills the width.

1. 1

   Insert the block

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   In the editor, type /markdrop (or choose Markdrop file from the + menu), or choose Embed a Markdrop file in the status bar under the page.

2. 2

   Pick the file

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   Your files lists what you've published on Markdrop, newest first, and the guide's workspace has its own tab. Search by name, or narrow to Interactive, Websites, PDFs, Videos or Documents. You can also Paste a link to any file you can open, or Upload one: it's published on Markdrop, viewable by anyone with the link, and embedded straight away.

3. 3

   Check what readers see

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   The block shows the file as readers will see it. Under it: Readers can see it when anyone with the link can view the file, the title, how it Shows (Live, On click or Card), its Size and its Text version.

A guide shows a file only to readers who could open its link anyway. If the file is private, password-protected, only for its workspace's members, or end-to-end encrypted, readers see a short notice instead, with nothing about the file, not even its name.

When you pick a file like that, the studio says so first. If it's yours, Make viewable and embed changes it to Anyone with the link can view, the same setting as in the file's Share dialog. You can change it back on Markdrop at any time, and the guide follows at once.

The page keeps only the file's link. When a reader scrolls to the block, the guide asks Markdrop what the file is now, so:

• Replace the file on Markdrop (a new version of the prototype, an updated price list) and every guide that embeds it shows the new one. No republish.
• Make it private or delete it, and it stops showing in every guide at once.
• Rename its link, and the old link still works.

To keep a guide on one version while you keep working on the file, choose it under Version (people who can edit the file can pin any kept version). Readers then see that version until you choose Latest again.

Search, Ask AI, AI agents (the page's Markdown and llms.txt) and people using screen readers can't watch a video or click through a prototype. Every block has a text version they get instead:

• Your summary, under Text version in the block: say what the file shows and what to try. It's shown under the block and to readers without JavaScript.
• A PDF's text and contents, read from the file when you publish.
• A video's chapters and transcript, from WebVTT files you add with Add captions and Add chapters in the block.

This is what the calculator above looks like to an agent reading this page as Markdown:

[Interactive page: Acme pricing calculator](https://markdrop.in/acme-pricing-calculator)

Pick a plan (Starter 9, Team 19 or Scale 39 dollars per seat a month), set the number of seats and choose monthly or yearly billing; the monthly and yearly totals update as you go. Fictional prices.

Embedded HTML is someone's code running inside your docs, so it never runs on your guide's address:

• A separate site. Files render on Markdrop's file domain (a separate registrable domain), never on your guide's address or markdrop.in.
• A locked sandbox. HTML runs with no access to cookies, storage, your guide's page or any other customer's file, and it can't send readers to another page. It can still run scripts, use forms and open dialogs, so demos work.
• Twice over. The frame's sandbox is repeated by the file server as a security header, so it holds even if the page is opened on its own.
• Your pages frame nothing else. Published guide pages may only frame Markdrop's file domain and the embed hosts you allowed.

With Insights on, Embedded files shows each block with its page: views, how many readers used it, full-screen opens and opens on Markdrop. For a video: plays, how far viewers got and where most of them stop. For a PDF: the page readers typically reach. The Fix list ranks the same signals, like a video that loses viewers at 0:42 or a PDF readers stop reading at page 3. Each file's own analytics on Markdrop counts these views too, under the Guides channel, with your guide's name.

Nothing about a reader is kept beyond what Insights already keeps: no cookie, no account, nothing for Do Not Track.

The block is one line. Everything but src is optional:

::markdrop{src="https://markdrop.in/acme-pricing-calculator" title="Pricing calculator" height=600 summary="What it does."}