Happy 17th Birthday TiddlyWiki!

TiddlyWiki is 17 years old today!

It was released as a throwaway demo on 20th September 2004. Relive that first version here:

https://classic.tiddlywiki.com/firstversion.html

Celebrated on Twitter, please do go and provide a heart, a retweet, or a comment to share the good news with the world if you’re on that network.

Or, share your thoughts about TiddlyWiki here as a comment.

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I’ve created a TW Anniversary Badge.

If you’d like to be granted this badge, leave a comment in this thread, perhaps with a unique TW experience or memory.

Just a bit of fun, we could grant this every year, think about a custom image, and so on.

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Yes Please;

Certainly I feel like an Old timer with TiddlyWiki because for many years I used TiddlyWiki 2 now called TiddlyWiki Classic.

Happy anniversary, I tip my hat to Jeremy!

I first came upon TiddlyWiki in late November, 2004.

My first add-on for TiddlyWiki was “ImportTiddlers”, which was written as a hard-coded “adaptation”, even before there was a plugin architecture. This made a huge difference, as prior to ImportTiddlers, the only way to transfer content between files was to copy/paste the source of each tiddler by hand!

Then, in 2005, I began working with “The UnaMesa Foundation”, a non-profit organization created by Greg Wolff to help people use open source technologies for health, education, and community purposes (“UnaMesa” is spanish for “one table”).

Soon after, Greg invited Jeremy to visit here in California. One evening, while sitting on my living room couch, Jeremy said to me: “You should make a website for your TiddlyWiki add-ons”… and the next day, I registered TiddlyTools.com (“Small Tools for Big Ideas!” tm).

And thus began our long collaboration. For the past 17 years, it’s been a wonderful journey… and I can only see more exciting times to come.

-e

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TiddlyWiki is one the great things I have ever had! She allowed me to enter the world of web technology!
I have had great great times with her, and I am sure we will have more exciting journey. TiddlyWiki is kind of friend for me, she helped me a lot and I helped TW many times :wink:

Q: TiddlyWiki is a male or female? For me TW is a girl : :blush:

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You mean there’s an easier way??? What!?!?! :angry: :crying_cat_face:

20 september 2014 - TW5 released.

sparklewine
Jeremy Ruston celebrated the TW5 release.

Tiddlywiki birthday is special in that it is us the users that gets the gifts - and not only on the birthday.

For all the wiki’s remembering stuff and todos - Life is remembered through what tiddlywiki did you start and use at that time.

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My journey towards acquiring the skills of a developer and eventually a UX designer - and all that it has allowed me to accomplish - started with TiddlyWiki in the mid 2000s. I came into it with no technical background and this adventure may have never gotten very far without the patient assistance of Eric Shulman, Jeremy Ruston, Simon Baird and others from this community. Thank you!

Here are some of my very first TW experiments as I attempted to learn by doing (which still work!):

  1. A MovieManager from 2006 for a friend that was a film fanatic

  2. Another TiddlyWiki from 2006 for a friend’s university assignment deliverable that was supposed to be presented in the form of a presentation. The friend in question shared my disdain for PowerPoint. Edit: for the behind the scenes view: Tears of the Sun - a case study of Africa in Hollywood film.

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I did discover TiddlyWiki around 2008 while I was searching for a possibility to create presentations without the need for a heavy wight software.

I had no idea about HTML, CSS and Javascript. TiddlyWiki and the community around it brought me into it. I was an observer of the discussion group for about a year or so as I thought I could show my first creation:

http://a-pm.tiddlyspot.com/

It did contain some of my own plugins a heavily modified theme and a long list of community plugins. Especially Saqs Navigation plugin and many elements from MonkeyPirateTiddlyWiki.

Looking at it now is great fun. … AND it still works!

Thanks to everyone involved!

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The oldest surviving tiddler in my main TW (which was migrated to TW5 from TW2) is “SiteSubtitle.” 9 July 2005. I love TiddlyWiki, but I am pretty certain its discovery did not expedite the writing of my dissertation (even though that would have been the motivation for discovering it). Evidence: a tiddler from August mentions “expanding my twempire.” :smiley:

Customising TiddlyWiki was my introduction to Javascript as well.

One TW worked for years as a rudimentary notes/citation manager for literature searches. It was fairly manual as citation formatting goes, but totally portable.

Jeremy and the community have been unfailingly supportive the entire time since. Thank you! :partying_face:

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Happy Birthday! Thanks to Jeremy and the community for this amazing thing.

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Huzzah! Happy Birthday!!! -><-

Whoa! Most interesting to see! And 2006! Masses of great stuff in those still. Very interesting! (And you understood, even then, the importance of Stuart Hall in cultural critique :-).

Though I do wonder how “long-in-the-tooth” you need be to be a TW aficionado? :slight_smile:

Very best,
TT

It is interesting! Your example I think illustrates well that TW long-term both has helped initial users become adept at both recording their doings and getting move involved in programming to solve more.

I think it is true that TW provides a near optimal learning environment.

Just observations, TT

Thanks all for confirming my bias :grinning:

For sometime I have suggested tiddlywiki is a platform and pointed out it is a worthwhile investment in time because regardless, if you stick with tiddlywiki or not, it is based on key webs standards. HTML, CSS and Javascript but also the soft skills of organising data, managing lists, hierarchies, network’s and databases to name a few.

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Though I do wonder how “long-in-the-tooth” you need be to be a TW aficionado?

Younger all the time as TW becomes more powerful, easier to adapt, and better-documented.

I guess that TW always appealed to people like me casting around for interesting creative/productivity tools. I’ve played with a lot of shiny things in my time. Something really intriguing about TiddlyWiki though, is that it seems to have been stickier than most shiny things for a number of people.

So TiddlyWiki is best because it’s “sticky” and “shiny.” Somebody hire me for their marketing team. :crazy_face:

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