Beyond empty.html a standard edition

#10

I have gone through your podcast links and extracted the meaningful points. Personally I feel we can address most of their stated negatives.

It seems part of the “Nah… not for me” that we have not being addressing is “who is Me?”. If we can get people to self nominate right away we can guide them accordingly, the problem is as soon as they take a branch in the road will they consider another branch?

  • I think this essential, to keep plugins to a minimum because it should become the go to edition for new users, and regular users needing a little more than empty.html
  • Any more size and complexity that is not dedicated to simplifying new user take up should not be used.

Should we add additional themes and layouts, and some prompts to experiment like in the “Home Tiddler” so users can quickly see the possibilities?

  • I think an option to remove many of the customisations such as unselected themes etc… could be provided in the standard build where we feel obliged to use something to make it attractive but its a little too heavy.
  • For new users the idea of deselecting features makes more sense that forcing them to go hunting;
    • And because, how do they know what to look for?
    • How do they go about looking for it?
  • This is where @twMat’s suggestion is spot on, I am just not sure how yet.
2 Likes
#11

IMO having the navigation pane open (+ always visible search) with a basic set of some general tags setup in the table of contents is sufficient as a starting point. Creating a table of contents (content tree), is a bit advanced, so giving the user a very basic structure and a link to an external resource on how it can be extended is enough. Yes, let’s help the users, but keep things as simple as possible with having a learning path forward. Additionally, I think we need to mention that Search is the primary way how content is retrieved.

It seems part of the “Nah… not for me” that we have not being addressing is “who is Me?”. If we can get people to self nominate right away we can guide them accordingly, the problem is as soon as they take a branch in the road will they consider another branch?

In general best practice is to guide your primary persona (let’s say we agree on a “Selfhoster” persona) but give them the option to explore. I wouldn’t worry about different learning paths (you call them branches) too much, as I thing the template should be very generic. Most deep dive links would then link to the full TW documentation. (restructuring the main documentation is a whole another beast and IMO a different discussion - and this is where you’d be thinking much more about personas and learning paths).

I think it’s important to iron out a “standard” template for complete beginners (persona agnostic with maybe persona specific deep-links to the main docs). The goal of the “standard” template should be to teach the user these tasks in about <15 minutes (happy to discuss/adjust/extend):

  • Have their own TW copy on TiddlyHost
  • Be able to create tiddlers
  • Be able to search
  • Be able to Tag
  • Be able to link tiddlers
  • Embed images
  • Use transclusion
  • Install one custom plugin
  • (optional) Switch template / little bit of customisation

I think this is doable. I picked these tasks because they cover let’s say 80% of day-to-day tasks. I’ve added transclusion and installing a plugin (by drag-and-drop) to get the wow factor (creating their own TW from a template which is done during the setup is another wow factor IMO).

2 Likes
"Nah... not for me" - Why?
#12

I agree these are importiant and need to be addressed however these are what " we know they will need" the harder part is getting clear what " they think they need". If addressed carfully we may achive both at once.

I raised once before the idea of doing a needs survey, without being evil you can do a “push poll” that is the questions you ask also tell them what they can get from tiddlywiki?

I feel we are realy getting somewhere. I hope others can also trawl through this whole thread and extract things for;

  • a home landing page and modern look
  • arractive introduction to tiddlywiki helping people identify its use for them
  • an appropriate standard edition that helps people adopt and experiment on their own
1 Like
Derailing the Nah - What is TW?
#13

I have updated the items that have being done on the demo site in the Top post.

https://standard.tiddlyhost.com/#It’s%20all%20in%20the%20name

Please review and Comment!

Further Questions

  • Should I add sticky titles and adjust the top of the page ? done
  • Configure $:/config/EmptyStoryMessage? done
  • what about a floating editor toolbar?
  • what color change could hint it is not an empty or tiddlywiki.com edition?
    • What is the css ?
  • Should we make close others visible on the toolbar?
  • Should we add the foldbar ? maybe not if people can get lost.
  • Should I add a journal-date to journal tiddlers so they can still be found even if the name or created date don’t reflect the journal date?
  • Should we have an option to;
    • show open tabs in a tabs bar at the top ?
    • activate the link-to-tabs icon so the tab source tiddler can be located? Requires a plugin
    • activate the editor-autolist? so new line on * # and tab works when typing lists. Requires a plugin
#14

Mobile view - default not good enough?

To cover a broad audience I think we need to plan for this standard image to be valid on mobile. What is the most appropriate layout for this?

Other additions

I have set $:/config/ShowEditPreview/PerTiddler so yes as its a helpful default

I have set Display tiddler titles as links yes, so open titles can be dragged. ie a tiddler link can be dragged and dropped.

  • With the sticky tiddler title you can thus click the title to jump to the top of the current tiddler.

With links draggable I have created a modified version of the toc-caption macro in $:/core/macros/toc such that a title dropped on an item in the Contents/TableOfContents will be tagged with the item in the TableOfContents and thus added to the contents.

  • I am not sure how to stop and infinite loop occurring just yet.
  • I have included the TableOfContents tag pill in the contents tab, with a tooltip, and items dropped on it will be tagged TableOfContents - this allows to top level Contents to be added.

I have added a little tag icon that appears in the subtitle, when a tiddler is itself a tag. It is a tag pill and has its features.

#15

I am looking for community involvement, I am after all making something as a solution to often raised issues. See here https://standard.tiddlyhost.com/

  • Download edition button now working
#16

A small update and a desire to inspire more reviews and suggestions of the standard edition https://standard.tiddlyhost.com/

  • Now you can clone this edition to your TiddlyHost sites
  • CPL and other Plugin libraries available in wiki
  • How to use this edition - added to default tiddlers

Are there other “how to tiddlers” that will help new or standard edition users?

  • Please share the text if you can
  • Any other key customisations that will help all users?
1 Like
#17

Hi, nice work here on this project of standard edition.
As a french guy, I feel concern by “translatability” of TW. I think we should always think for people all around the world.
Jeremy showed us the path to easily translate the UI of TW. So I made some modifications to the tiddlers making the top menu. Adding translatable tiddlers to affect the
captions of menus.
For the content menu I use the existing sidebar menu content caption. For jumplist and history I created specific language tiddlers (here in french).
But instead of pointing to the text field of language tiddlers, I select to point to caption field of the language tiddler. In this way we could have more flexibility to add any other information translatable for a specific function tiddler (description, summary, …) instead of one tiddler per line of text…

My 2 cents…

menubar-language-translatable-tiddlers.json (24.0 KB)

2 Likes
#18

Thank you I will have a go at applying them. I know a little French myself (not much).

#19

I LOVE that Masquerade tool! I was searching for a means of launching/doing more from the search field and found this. So great!

#20

Thanks to @baiguai I’m now discovering this masequerade technique you’ve developed, @TW_Tones

I think in a starter/basic edition, it couldn’t hurt to have quite a few of these in addition to those in your “standard” site. A new user might go looking for “palette” or “shortcut” or “theme” or “cascade” (etc.) and be frustrated, since such concepts are mentioned frequently in discussion here, but yield no results in the standard search interface.

When/if someone has developed public-facing content, it should be easy to wipe out all these system-oriented masquerade shells (or to do so only when in reader mode), so that the search menu yields only the substantive content created by the author.

#21

I missed this the first time around…

Other than it being able to surface otherwise difficult to reach tiddlers, I don’t see anything masquerading as “something else”. For example, I bring up the (M) Control Panel, make a few changes and they appear in the wiki. How is that a masquerade? What am I missing?

Usually, terminology matters.

On a positive note, very clever @TW_Tones, :clap:

#22

@baiguai thanks for waking up this thread. Glad you like masquerade and it is one way to “surface additional or hidden content”. There are many other ways to do this, which could be a topic of its own.

@Springer this standard edition idea was to be just a little more than empty to make it a little easier for new users. I like your idea but I wonder when it changes from a standard wiki designed to replace empty and becomes a learning edition?

  • I would be happy if you gave me a list of system tiddlers you think I could “surface” for new users, and I will add them.

Great idea to set it up so the accessible components can be turned off or removed later.

  • I have a method I call mode handling which may help here. Just switch it all off. I will give this more thought.
  • of course I could deliver all changes from empty as a seperate plugin in the future.

@CodaCoder thanks for taking a closer look and in some ways proving the value of the masquerade, here that was its intention, as trivial as it may seem.

  • It does what “is written on the label”, works as the control panel.
  • edit it to see the content

The tiddler with the $:/ControlPanel M is in fact the tiddler “Control Panel” masquerading as $:/ControlPanel ie pretending to be $:/ControlPanel, as it is a tiddler not a system tiddler, not a shadow tiddler, it is found by the standard search. I just added the word settings, inside Control Panel, inside hidden comments, now control panel will be also found with the search term “settings”.

Masquerade in My TiddlyWiki — standard starter edition TW v5.3.3

  • I used this masquerading to simply make these system tiddlers accessible by search because they may not yet know which button does what.

Masquerade elsewhere;

[Post script]

I am starting the gradual process of updating this edition, its now at 5.3.3

#23

I did. And to be clear, I think what you’ve done here is a commendable and diligent rethinking of an issue as old as TiddlyWiki itself – namely, searching for and surfacing (partly) the inner workings. You should be proud of yourself and rightly so. :clap:

The name though, I don’t get it. it’s not a masquerade. It doesn’t hide anything, it doesn’t mask anything (and, as one dictionary definition has it) it doesn’t make a fiction of anything or present a “false outward show”. What it does is REpresent things.

No, sorry, I don’t have a better name :confused:

Can I live with it? Sure. Though I might need to file it under “pet peeves” :wink:

#24
  • It’s only a matter of language, and creative language for that matter, so what meaning you imbue it with can be somewhat personal.

It you go to the “masquerade ball” you may look like the “queen of Sheba” but it is just you, a regular person (or tiddler), you were masquerading as the “Queen of Sheba”, you are not the actual “Queen of sheba”.

  • One reason it is a masquerade if used as designed the title and content, looks like that of the tiddler you are masquerading.
  • It masks the real name of the tiddler and passes it off as another.

So I think it does everything you said it does not;

Does this change your perspective @CodaCoder ?

#25

Like I said, I can live with it. I don’t have anything to add. :neutral_face:

#26

I’m sure this has been brought up ad nauseam, but I think one of the biggest impediments to adopting TW is the look of it. It looks like it is from the old days of the internet.

The newer comparable products are very slick looking and, for better or worse, that is attractive to new users no matter what the potential is under the hood. If it looks out of date, people won’t even try it.

The notebook theme goes a long way to remedy this situation (and it works on mobile) so I would recommend that be the theme for any starter edition (or something like it). In fact, I might go so far as to say make it look good first, then add in the other fancy features. Kinda backwards I suppose, but I think it would help get people in the door.

#27

@belmont224

I understand where you are coming from, but I think for a basic starter edition we should not do something drastically different from the default.

  • On one hand, You could join previous discussions about changing this default view or at least adding a second modern view to the default distribution.
  • On the other hand consider helping to finalise my proposed standard edition and once that is stable and agreed we can “fork it” into one with your proposed “modern look”.
    • At the same time consider a plugin or package to apply this modern look to any wiki.
  • Then we can present more than one standard edition with the same functionality but with two or more “looks”.
    • The core layout and look
    • Your idea or a modern look
    • A mobile focused look/layout

Using this method we still only maintain one standard edition, I propose this to supersede empty.html, whilst retaining empty.html for experienced users to build wikis from the ground up.

This is my main contention. Empty is too empty for new users. It serves it purpose but it is a brutal first wiki, for new users, it does not even have;

  • Page Controls More button…
  • A contents tab
  • Expand to fill the browser window (fluid story, fixed sidebar)
  • A sidebar tab for Journal entries
  • Access to system tags not already in use
  • The menu bar as an alternative to the sidebar
  • A link to discuss the edition in talk.tiddlywiki

But then we can present a few alternative layouts/views to attract different users based on aesthetics.

1 Like
#28

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone maintain the Notebook theme currently? If not, has anyone considered adopting it? (Here in github it looks abandoned.)

I’m wondering, is it still fully functional with the latest versions of TiddlyWiki? Perhaps theming in TiddlyWiki is stable enough that it doesn’t need much maintenance. What do you think?

FWIW I do think it’s really high quality and it would be worthwhile keeping the project alive.

#29

I’m pretty sure that it has been abandoned, that the author is no longer involved in the TW community. It would be great for someone who knows something about theming to pick it up.

I haven’t tried it with 5.3.3, but when I did try it with 5.3.1, it seemed to function perfectly.

I agree. I wish I could volunteer, but not only are my skill-sets not a good fit, I also have seemed to over-committed myself lately.