Do you Like the Current User Interface of TiddlyWIki for Real Works? If So, Where Do You Use It?

#1

Despite the current discussions on the visual face of Tiddlywiki (which are absolutely correct), is there anybody out there who likes the current face of TiddlyWiki for real work?

Important Remarks

I absolutely support those discussions ask for a modern face of TiddlyWiki (this mainly means theme/palette/pagetemplate, UI) and visual side of TW.
This thread is only related to empty.html, and not the tiddlywiki.com). So, this thread does not mean to stick with current design!

#2

While I highly support the movement for modernizing the TiddlyWiki UI (the layout, font, color, element,…)

BUT

I use the current UI nad love it for below two real cases:

  1. For research
    Example: I assigned a recatch title to my grad student entitles: “Application of AI in Chemical Process Optimization”

The student starts with an empty Mehregan.html. It is the same empty.html with rather wide sidebar and some plugins (official and community). The student uses Timimi + single html on his/her favorite browser / OS on laptops/desktops. But Windows tablets or Android tablets with Tiddliods are also used.

Student needs

  • Do a literature survey
  • Add some bibliography
  • Take important notes
  • Link to main resources
  • Link to key researchers/scientists /people in the field
  • Add images, tables, drawings
  • Summarize some features
  • Create conclusions

Using Mehregan, one can enjoy the node explorer for bidirectional information flow.

  1. For class notes
  2. For general note taking

We enjoy the wide sidebar, tiddler in separate window, the visible structure of tiddler (note card), simple and quick tools to summarize findings on some common features, categorize, link, and rich environment.

If you note all kookma tools use the standard TiddlyWiki Ui. KaTeX allows us to write math formula, relinks takes care of renaming research cards (tiddler), Shiraz allows to have colorful elements for more attention to specific parts, dynamic tables are useful for summarizing findings, …

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#3

I do like the current face of Tiddlywiki but my wiki does include some modest Custom CSS and also a custom sidebar tab which lists every tag as a pill button and includes various clickable filters for populating the story river.

So empty.html alone was not quite sufficient for my needs but my needs were achieved over time and with a modest learning curve. I don’t believe all users would find my customisations useful so empty.html seems to me to be about as good as it could be without imposing one person’s view on everyone else.

I feel that the standard empty.html before the user optionally adds additional functionality with plugins should remain “ontopic” as a wiki-knowledge base and not slide into a multifunctional swiss-army-knife life-and-business organiser and so on but great that these things are optional add-ons.

Sorry it’s not a particularly good answer - I am basically happy with the existing situation and cautious regards big changes to the main standard product that might be good for some and not others.

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#4

Sure! It can be fine for many situations.

In English we have the saying “horses-for-courses” which I think perfectly expresses the issue.

I think what has got very clear is that the presentation of TW as one layout may be inhibiting its wider adoption.

IMO the CSS of TW natively is very good and could let us demo many types of view, pretty easily.

I DO not think the issue is anything to do with lack of power on interface; rather about getting creative with the other views possible.

And advertising them.

Just a comment
TT

#5

90% of my wikis use the current User interface and simply evolve with Just in time installs of features and tweaks. I only expect to reform the User interface for editions and some public wikis.

  • Yes, I spend much of my time developing tiddlywiki skills and features based on years of experience. So I am not sure what naĂŻve users would think.
  • I do have a bookmarklet I apply to empty.html, most of my wikis including others wikis I visit and especially tiddlywiki.com - primarily some extra tabs, a “browse multiple button” and showing the more drop down buttons at a minimum. I also add the contents tab,
    • and often set default tiddlers only to “Home” and create a Home tiddler containing;
    • <strong>Welcome "{{$:/status/UserName}}" to "{{$:/SiteTitle}}"</strong> {{$:/SiteSubtitle}} tagged “TableOfContents”
    • By default, since I install from bookmarklets, I do install my unpublished bookmarklets creator, allowing me to make bookmarklets out of sets or single tiddlers for quick installs elsewhere, but these are functional not UI changes.
  • I also often install my “reimagine Tags tools” mentioned elsewhere to turbo charge the features on the tag pill dropdown.
  • If there were an empty edition maintained that included the more dropdowns, and the menu bar plugin, I would possibly never use the empty.html
    • Possibly one on which one could toggle a left sidebar

In short - I Just use a slightly customised version of the TiddlyWiki UI as a rule.

#6

Most of my usage of TW5 involves using the primitives (like widgets, filters, story handling etc) as a toolkit to create bespoke applications with a custom UI that starts from a blank page. For the longest time I was achieving this by creating custom builds of TW5 that did not include any of the core templates, CSS or macros and most of the tiddlers with the $:/core/ui prefix.

Since the introduction of switchable page layouts, I am slowly transitioning to reimplementing those applications on a standard empty.html where the default UI is the backstage area or recovery tool in case something goes wrong, and the bespoke UI is the default. Having the standard UI always available as a fall-back for recovery is actually tremendously useful and allows a lot more freedom when creating a bespoke UI from scratch.

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#7

I’m using TW to record a11y tests and create overviews. I’m coding my own stuff but I have very little tweaks with the standard layout. It’s simple and efficient and I really see no point in chaging it but a few points.

I have added a standard menu on the right for my own app. I wish there was in standard a save-but-keep/editing button.

I would also appreciate a possibility to sort the list of currently opened tiddler and that a special field be used to feed a hint bubble to tell me what tiddler $:/user/data/test/425/info is about (esecially as there could be several tiddlers opened with such automatically generated names).

An other change I did is put a fix fonts for all editing of tiddlers. It really should be made so by default for otherwise you can’t easily spot difference beween a ouble quote or two simple quotes. Among other interests…

#8

There is as mentioned recently EditButtons, Save & close / Cancel & close / Save & keep open

#9

My main complaint regarding the TiddlyWiki default layout is that the empty space above the SiteTitle wastes space. Gaining an inch would mean that users would see more search results and more sidebar tab content without having to scroll. Here is my fix:

div.tc-sidebar-scrollable
{ padding-top: 0px ;
}
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#10

The sidebar All, Tags, System, and Shadow tabs could have list-searches. This would reduce scrolling up and down.

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#11

The “close all” button should be at the top of the Open tab, not at the bottom. Again, the issue is reducing scrolling.

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