Hi there,
I’ve been using Tiddly desktop for a while on my personal laptop. I also have a work laptop (windows) that I don’t have admin privileges on - this means that I can’t install software or even any browser plugins on the machine. Is there a way I can edit and save my TW html file locally without having to install any software?
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G’day, TiddlyWiki “au natural” (as in empty.html, with no plugins or “saver helpers” like TiddlyDesktop etc.) has a save button.
That save button is a “download this single-page web application” button. It behaves a bit like “Save As” in any Windows software.
Empty.html (or any instance of TiddlyWiki.html) is just a file, no different than a *.txt (notepad.exe file) or anything else.
You should be able to download empty.html, or any other TiddlyWiki instance, or copy any TiddlyWiki instance (say from a thumb drive), to any Windows folder you can create a file in.
From that point on, the TiddlyWiki save button works like a Save As. Either you give the latest file a new name, or you overwrite the previous version.
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Thanks, this helps. I guess I was only wondering if there was a way to automatically overwrite the current file during a save (like the saver helpers), instead of having to select the file via the “save as” dialog everytime. This isn’t a deal breaker for me though, thanks for the explanation.
I don’t think tiddly desktop needs admin privalages! Could be worth a shot.
Although I’ve often run with a “easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission” philosophy …
If the computer is locked down, and you’ve actually put “traditional” software on it (TiddlyWiki being a self-contained html file, I don’t consider it “traditional” software), and I.T. admin folk discover it, you could get blacklisted if your I.T. admin group is hyper-vigilant in regards to security.
By “traditional” software, I mean software that interacts with the operating system and/or has access to the file system. TiddlyDesktop is not a “traditional install”, but it is “traditional software” in the sense that it has access to operating system services (including access to the file system.)
Forewarned is forearmed ?
Which browser is installed on your system?
By some organisations a tiddlywiki file may just be concidered a document. Like a pdf file you can view in a browser, others think of html as a website and may think it risky.
Perhaps first test if you can access a private tiddlyhost site. But Concider this off-site and dont store information you cant take home.
There are some tiddlywiki saver or backup solutions that store tiddlywiki on the local downloads location in a folder without needing to download then save as over the last. Saving in tiddlywiki means it never leaves the organisation.
I have some other ideas based on recent hacks but let us know how you go.
Last I checked I needed to open a .exe in order to install Tiddly desktop - this wouldn’t be permitted on the work machine. I will check again, thanks.
As much as I’m aware, my company’s IT admin group aren’t hyper-vigilant, saving TW html files shouldn’t be a problem. Only issue is installing stuff (executables and browser plugins) is locked down (as it should be).
Edge and Chrome are installed on the machine.
Thanks, I will try checking to see whether I’m able to access the private tiddllyhost site.
Single file tiddlywikis can be used without tiddlydesktop in the browser. Its great when you can install it but there are many other ways to use tiddlywiki.
Perhaps outline your key use of tiddlywiki
if this is a Windows corporate environment, you should try the webdav/sharepoint/aspx route:
put your file in a location managed by/replicated to onedrive
rename your file, changing .html to .aspx, and open it in your browser, navigating to it via sharepoint
then edit something in the wiki and try to save; TW will attempt to save using webdav, which should persist your changes.
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Yes.
- I save a TW file on one of our network drives and can access the network drive from all my work PCs. I work on at least 3 others PCs using Remote Desktop and that works.
- You should have full access to your own Documents folder on Windows. Just make a subfolder called “tiddlywiki” or just “wiki”. This folder maps to \users\YOURUSER\My Documents. Replace YOURUSER with your actual username.
- You can always create c:\temp\tiddlywiki and store it in there. Because you created the folder you should have full permissions to it.
- And I ONLY use Chrome to open, edit and save TW files. Firefox doesn’t work so well even with the FF saver.
- Can you save it to Onedrive? That’s usually installed in all Microsoft environments. You can try to save it to other cloud/drive services as well like https://Dropbox.com, or https://Mega.nz. Both have free options.
Because TW is a self-modifying file it will likely trigger most anti-malware packages. Make sure to whitelist that dir that holds the TW file in the anti-malware package if you can.
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TiddlyStow - stow TiddlyWiki files locally using the browser file system api is a simple webpage which will accomplish this. It works on Chrome and it might also work with Edge.
If you use it, please make frequent backups.
Apologies for being unclear.
I meant that an I.T. security group might take issue with TiddlyDesktop ( because that is software that interacts with the operating system services.)
Aside: I’ve dealt with super-extra-vigilant I.T. security folk who did not like TiddlyWiki.html existing on work devices. Their primary concern is often about the possibility of the product having links to malicious sites (like “spoofing” sites.
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I had a similar problem at my work where existing save solutions I explored were not permitted on my work machine. I also couldn’t run powershell scripts that were not approved.
I wrote myself a bat script to save files for me which I manually run after saving the updated wiki to the download folder. My companies security has not had an issue with this or other scripts I’ve written to help me in my job.
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