Requesting an official "guide" plugin

Plugins
#1

This is a request for a plugin that can be used to create “UI guides” e.g wizards for other plugins or just for TW in general. I propose this as an official plugin so it sticks to a standard UI that everyone can rely on to easily create content for.

This image shows the rough idea; A “window” on top of everything that dynamically shows custom information depending on what tiddlers appear in the viewport:

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Basically:

  • It senses what tiddler/s are in the viewport
    …and those tiddler/s then…
  • determine if the popup is to show or not, its position and size
  • and what content it displays

Creating this is beyond most people but my point is that it is not beyond most people to create valuable content for it, such as:

  • Clear notes about what your non-TW partner or child should click on
  • Wizard with full step-by-step guidance for a plugin
  • Sarahs cool “Intro to TW for Teachers”

Again, the reason for requesting this as an officially supported plugin is so everyone can rely on its standards. I think a particularly popular use could be for plugin creators to present plugin instructions for their creations. Currently, there’s only the readme tiddler standard to rely on, but this of course not optimal for, for example, instructions that needs step-by-step doing along the way. And if the “guide” plugin is official, then there are no issues with license rights etc, and it is simple for the plugin creator to provide a link to it directly in the plugin (“install the official Guide-plugin, if you don’t alredy have it, to get interactive step-by-step guidance”).

Plugin creators, and community members at large, should be able to easily share guides (i.e the content) without having to create special constructions required to show the guide.

@jeremyruston - opinion? There is the Help plugin but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use it and it’s been tagging along in the preview forever now. How about giving it a thorough face lift to make it much more usable?

BTW, if it is installed on tiddlywiki.com then community members can even create interactive and personal guides that are used directly in tiddlywiki.com “… Hey Bob, just drop this file onto tw.com and you’ll get a personal guiding from me there”.

3 Likes
#2

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In this reply by @jeremyruston in GitHub, he has said that he is working on a new confetti plug in - interactive tour that guides users through the basics of getting started with the TiddlyWiki user interface. Check here - https://tiddlywiki5-git-confetti-plugin-jermolene.vercel.app/

#3

Haha! How timely (and that sprouting confetti made me laugh!) OK, that is definitely related but the demo for it indicates that it follows a strict order of events, rather than something that reacts to what the user might initiate. The reason for my request to sense what tiddlers are in the viewport is so that the user can get the popup for a tiddler at any time. It is very interesting how the confetti plugin detects various subtasks though, to sense if the user did a specific thing.

#4

@twMat May be this link can give you some more details. I don’t have the knowledge to tell anything more about it. Jeremy must the best person to answer your question.

#5

Here’s a pretty cool idea for how the “guide plugin” (for lack of a better name) could function:

Doc authors could create content for this plugin, presumably in the form of tiddlers or plugins. If an end user has the guide plugin installed, and also installs such content tiddlers from multiple authors, the end user would potentially get “multiple” guidance for specific tiddlers.

Example: Both @arunnbabu81 and I author something about HelloThere. The end user drags in both of our tiddlers (or plugins or what be it) into, say, tiddlywiki.com. When the user opens HelloThere, the guide pops up, showing both arunnbabus and my stuff.

I guess popup “position” and similar could be fought over like CSS (i.e last one called wins).

#6

If it was a popup window (not a popup div element) separate from and without polluting the host wiki, then the entire chain of help material could be listed.

The content would need to be curated, not just for inclusion, but also by the user, live in the popup – “stop showing me twMat’s stuff because his jokes are terrible” :wink:

#7

Hm, you seem to refer to some kind of live stream. (That is actually very close to an old idea I had for TWederation and subscribing to wikis to get comments on e.g plugins) but what I describe in this thread is that the end user very deliberatly imports “guide tiddlers” with comments from specific individuals.

Pah! My humour is just too sophisticated for you! :wink: