Jul 172010
To quote the official information;
TiddlyWiki is a reusable non-linear personal web notebook.
Some of you will be immediately interested in “reusable non-linear personal web notebook”‘, but may may miss the meaning in that simple statement.
So lets look a little further.
TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki – including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. Because it’s a single file, it’s very portable – you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick.
But it’s not just a wiki! It has very powerful plugin capabilities, so it can also be used to build new tools. You have full control over how it looks and behaves. For example, TiddlyWiki is already being used as:
- A personal notebook
- A GTD (“Getting Things Done”) productivity tool
- A collaboration tool
- For building websites (the site is itself a TiddlyWiki file!)
- For rapid prototyping
- …and much more!
You can import and export data to and from all sorts of places. Check out some of the Examples of TiddlyWiki in use, and the Features that are available.
What does it mean to me ?, what do I use it for ? and why does it rate a mention here ?
One way is to check it out for your self, see www.tidlywiki.com and get it now for free. Now give yourself a little time to work it out. It is not that it is difficult, but once you realise its basic structure you discover it’s infinite promise and you could spend the rest of your life a devotee, as I am.
Basically, without programing you can get you self your own interactive website that can basically evolve with you as you customise it to meet your application needs. Yet this can simply be transported by USB in a single file, or as I do stored on DropBox and access it from any browser. But wait, no steak knives, however it may be a standalone file yet it can be made into a server based site, see tiddlyspot.com for your own free public or Private to interface with the Internet through HTML Java and other common web protocols or languages.
Back that up with a wealth of tools, the premier tools site is is in my opinion www.tiddlytools.com but wait until “you get it” before diving in there. Perhaps also use www.tiddlywiki.org as a good reference.
One of the best things is the community, I regularly see in our group forum new users posting that this is the best and most helpful community forum they have ever used. In the groups own words; New Users: Please don’t hesitate to post your questions. Elsewhere you are expected to wade through the archives before posting any questions. But it’s not like that here – just jump in.
See the TiddlyWiki Google group yourself, and there is a developer one for the hackers.
I will post on TiddlyWiki again, of that you can be assured. But I expect each time it will about how you can do something really useful. Oh, and before I post this there are a range of various implementations like pre-built Get Things Done, Presentation and other specialist ones for maths, genealogy etc…
