[tw5] Left column of links as in Classic?

[Daren_Scot_Wilson]

Is it possible, without a lot of trouble, to make a left column with links (maybe other stuff) defined in a tiddler, as in Classic? That was one important feature making TW useful to me. I switched to TW5 about two years ago, due to TWC no longer being able to save changes. I miss the usefulness of having a fixed place with quick ways to get to important everyday tiddlers. Is there a plugin or some settings to create this feature in TW5?

(You’d think other would want this too, but I find a search brings up only a few brief mentions, no how-to.)

[pmario]

Hi,

You should at least provide a screenshot, so we know what you are talking about.

-mario

[Greg_Davis]

Not quite the same as Classic Tiddlywiki but you might try Nicolas Petton’s Notebook theme. It puts everything to the left. You could add, say a ‘TableOfContents’ to the sidebar and put those extra links there. I’m using most of the time now with the his Dark Palette.

Nicolas Petton’s Notebook theme: https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/jdEb_TuJia4/m/Nlwb2iRSBQAJ

In the past I’ve built wikis based on the left menu by Ton Gerner:

TW5 Top + left menu 2.33 — a demo TiddlyWiki ( TW v5.1.22) http://tw5topleft.tiddlyspot.com/

[Daren_Scot_Wilson]

Like this. The main content is in the middle, with more or less the same stuff on the right as in the new tiddly, to search, list tags, list everything, etc. On the left is what was useful every day, a list of fixed links. I had one for each day of the week, for mornings, evenings, etc for checklists, links for programming language tiddlers, links to various reference tiddlers, for easy access. It was always there, and quick to get to something like a list of Greek letters or the end of day checklist. These links were defined in a Menu tiddler. The very last link was one to bring up the Menu tiddler itself for editing. Life was good, then the new tiddly5 came out and this left column feature vanished. Is there a plugin that restores it?

BTW, for anyone who says to just use the classic tiddly, I did, but then one day it stopped being able to save itself. I couldn’t save changes to my info, due to iirc changes in the browsers or security or some such. If it’s possible to get classic to work properly, I’d keep using it.

[Mat]

See if https://leftbar.tiddlyspot.com/ works for you. There was some complaint about 1-2 months ago about some problem on - if I recall - the nodejs version… or maybe it was resolved, can’t remember. If you search for it you should find it.

<:-)

[Daren_Scot_Wilson]

I made a couple of good discoveries today. One is that making a tiddler listing some links and adding a tag of $:/tags/SideBar will make it available as a new tab right after “More”. Cool! Not quite the same as having the links directly available and always visible (when not scrolled out of view), but a tab is good enough for making those hand oft-used tiddlers easy to reach at the cost of only one click.

The other discovery is that I can use old classic tiddly markup by setting the type. I didn’t know about ‘type’ but I stumbled upon it while investigating the first discovery. I find the newer markup harder to use, demanding lots of blank lines or it won’t work, and at least half my tiddlers are still in classic markup. So that’s another win.

The Notebook thing seems to drag in more than I need, re-arranges stuff, and for the one thing I need, is redundant with the first discovery. I’m sure it’s great for plenty of tiddly users, but I’m happy with the tagging trick (assuming I remember that exact syntax).

[Daren_Scot_Wilson]

That leftbar plugin is great! I’m not sure whether I’ll stick with the tab tag trick. Left bar pops up when hovering the cursor in the left margin, so it doesn’t take up space when I’m not interested in it. I have no longer lust for using classic.