A Rant

[Furicle]

I am having a ridiculously complicated time trying to use TW.  I think a new user will never jump through all these hoops.

Firefox is forcing the end of TiddlyFox, fine. There's a great Getting Started doc with all the options to replace it.
But darned if I can get any of them I've tried to work....

• TW in the Sky Dropbox
•  either doesn't work, or I can't figure out how to work it.  It authenticates, I've got a folder in Dropbox/Apps, but I can't get it to use my tw.  Really needs documentation.
  

• TW Desktop
• no installer, just a zip folder - where do you put it, exactly?  Does it matter?  How am I supposed to know I launch something labelled nw.exe?
  
• can't see the screens half the time.  Opens randomly hidden or off screen, most of the time
• Muck around and get the windows to actually be visible, and get it to open and display one of my tiddlers, and it still won't save?
• Node.js
• No Windows instructions

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

I'm not dumping on anyone.  I'm grateful for the work done to date.  I'm not owed anything.  I'm not demanding a darned thing.

I'm a reasonably technically advanced current TW classic user, and I can not, after spending quite some time at, move forward.

I'm trying to say this community really needs to take a look at usability if it wants to be anything more than a niche product....

[Mark S.]

Re installing node.js, did the instructions at "Installing TiddlyWiki on Node.js" at tiddlywiki.com not work for you? They were the one's I followed for node.js on Windows. I may have jumped through loops and have forgotten.

Do you have a requirement for cloud or net-based tiddlywiki? I notice the options you tried were net based.

The easiest net-based solution is TiddlyServer (IMO).

The easiest simple save solution for standalone files is either BJ's savetiddlers approach or Mario's new saver described here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/h0k7z62N79Y

HTH
Mark

[Furicle]

Please note - my message was mostly about how tough it is to make this thing work if you aren't a javascript dev.
Has this been discussed on this list before?

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 11:34:33 AM UTC-5, Mark S. wrote:

Re installing node.js, did the instructions at "Installing TiddlyWiki on Node.js" at tiddlywiki.com not work for you?

There are no instructions for Windows.
Re-reading carefully I guess it's implied by the line "or directly from nodejs.org"
The rest of the page is a set of command line instructions, with specific notes for Mac or Linux in certain places.

Not something you'd expect to work on Windows.

I'll consider this set up - my wiki is somewhat confidential, I'm not thrilled with making it accessible from the network.

Do you have a requirement for cloud or net-based tiddlywiki? I notice the options you tried were net based.

What I want is file based - it's somewhat confidential - making it available on the network (and adding a server to my laptop) is not something I'd prefer.  On the other hand, a cloud service (other than one of the 'big three' that I trust to be reasonably secure and reliable) isn't appropriate

The easiest net-based solution is TiddlyServer (IMO).

I have read https://www.didaxy.com/introduction-to-tiddlyserver which is supposed to be the 'easy concise' installation instructions.

Install node, install a server package, edit a json file, click on somthing or other that might start the server, then use a special bookmark to save?

Why not  use m4 macros too?

 

The easiest simple save solution for standalone files is either BJ's savetiddlers approach or Mario's new saver described here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/h0k7z62N79Y

Savetiddlers has a nice banner saying "don't use me"

Thank you for that link to Mario's plug in  - I hadn't looked at that before.  It seems like the solution I want, except I have to keep my wiki in the downloads folder.  Not ideal, but possibly workable.

[Furicle]

At the risk of asking a stupid question - would it be difficult to just wrap it all up in an Electron app bundle like Slack et al?

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Furicle

Furicle wrote: I am having a ridiculously complicated time trying to use TW.  I think a new user will never jump through all these hoops.

I think your sentiment is spot-on.

Its a bit of a insolvable issue as there is NO dedicated "Make It Simple For Newbies" Department. The problem is that WITHIN the TW Community (mainly here) there is great concern to enable new methods of saving. And its SOLVED already for important issues & is (right now) being refined even further.

Its coming out in a really GOOD place with many more options than before. Like this ...

HOWEVER for a newbie it can be a NIGHTMARE being confronted with so many options the implications of which, at ground zero, they can't possible know at the start. In addition they are not all so well documented--they rely a lot on IMPLICIT knowledge that is quite technical.

Some way of NAVIGATING one's way to a MINIMAL solution would help.

BUT, on the whole the standard TiddlyWiki has an IMPLYING on SAVING that you are prepared to dabble in quite a lot of D.I.Y., I think

Best wishes
Josiah

[PMario]

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 4:58:57 PM UTC+1, Furicle wrote:

I am having a ridiculously complicated time trying to use TW.  I think a new user will never jump through all these hoops.

Firefox is forcing the end of TiddlyFox, fine. There's a great Getting Started doc with all the options to replace it.

See: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/h0k7z62N79Y

and: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/9984ShVVbbA

for possible replacements.

have fun!

mario

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao PMario

Furicle wrote:

I am having a ridiculously complicated time trying to use TW.  I think a new user will never jump through all these hoops.

PMario replied:

See: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/h0k7z62N79Y

and: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/9984ShVVbbA

for possible replacements.

The problem with these is they are NOT documentation. They are discussion of emergent projects. Newbies who simply want to get on and DO IT will likely not bother.

For instance, HOW will Mabel Antwerp (47, single with cat, non-smoker) of Stuttgart cope with such discussions? All she wants to do is save pictures of Jack & Clarice.

Debate in the cages of the Wilhelma Zoo goes like this...

 

"I'm very unsure what to do. The options are too many.
And still not settled."

Best wishes
Josiah

[Jeremy Ruston]

At the risk of asking a stupid question - would it be difficult to just wrap it all up in an Electron app bundle like Slack et al?

That’s actually what TiddlyDesktop is, except that it uses the older nw.js rather than Electron.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

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[PMario]

On Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 12:55:31 PM UTC+1, @TiddlyTweeter wrote:

Ciao PMario

Furicle wrote:

I am having a ridiculously complicated time trying to use TW.  I think a new user will never jump through all these hoops.

PMario replied:

See: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/h0k7z62N79Y

and: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/9984ShVVbbA

for possible replacements.

The problem with these is they are NOT documentation. They are discussion of emergent projects. Newbies who simply want to get on and DO IT will likely not bother.

Yea, but my first 3 clickable links in the first post are links to documentation and a video instruction.
I really don't know, how to provide better info, than let a user watch, how it should work. ..

If this ins't enough info, I really don't know, what more can be done.

I know, that the video needs to be refined, once the final version is out.

have fun!
mario
PS: I also got some hints, how to improve the visual feedback of the AddOn, reviewing my own video. Which will land in one of the next versions.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao PMario

You do get it--but you miss something also--I think.

IF you refer to a thread people read the THREAD.

But they DO NOT need to read the thread.

What they NEED is direct links to INSTRUCTIONS of what to do to get something working FIRST.

Discussion should NEVER come first IMO when the aim is ACTIVATING SIMPLE UTILITY.

Discussion is for troubleshooting, NOT setup.

Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jeremy

The latest TiddlyDesktop is great. Its very good--likely the lowest hassle for TiddlyWiki that are "self contained". Its very reliable IME.

BUT its not so good if you need to be able to do things that normal web-browsers provide like "Print Edit" and "Save to Scrapbook."

The RESULTANT SCOPE of the differential ways of running TiddlyWiki is not so well documented. BUT, in reality, folk use TW in CONTEXTS. I think PART of the issue with parting with Firefox is not just TW, its also all the OTHER stuff FF did too.

In mourning
Josiah

[Diego Mesa]

Hey all,

With this thread, and the related Yearning for ONE method:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/TiddlyWiki/19LF5KynLAc

I definitely think TiddlyWiki would benefit immensely from well thought out "New User Experience" that "Just Works Out of the Box". I have 100% drunk the koolaid when it comes to TW. But I had a very hard time explaining it to someone else, when it came to "Oh no actually you have to either save like this, or like that, or, yeah it could be one file, or yeah you could install a plugin for that, or, etc etc etc"

I think this community can try to develop sort of an EverNote-likeish-clone that just come prepackaged, is easy to explain and use. What do you guys think? 

[TonyM]

Furicle,

I feel your pain. Although I am happy using multiple methods to save and manage tiddlywikis and except for a few small bug fixes I could not want for more features or options,

the fact is the information is not clearly available for a newcomer to choose which path to take, have clear instructions to do so, 

and most importantly does not demand a careful step by step, focused process to achieve a basic outcome. 

All solutions are somewhat sensitive in some way often requiring a fix or more information and choosing amongst the options difficult.

In defence of the community, a concerted effort has being made to develop solutions and solutions are demonstrating engineering excellence, knowledge and skills of our community.

I have no doubt the methods and instructions will mature, and will be packaged in some way.

In the mean time we will help anyone here, and work to reducing the barriers.

Regards

Tonyt

[Abraham Samma]

Usability for newbies is a challenge for TW5 but it is not insurmountable.

Take my project Maarfapad which gives you access to a TW5 cloud service among other things: I've had some success with getting newbies on board by providing them with a simple *interactive* manual inside their wikis that takes them through most of TW5's functionality step by step. The fact that it helped even my mother (a person who tries to stay away from computers most of the time) understand how tiddlywiki works enough to actually USE it is encouraging.

I believe designing less verbose, more interactive manuals within wikis will help gain more users. Its kind of like designing video game tutorials. You want the user to pick up essentials easily and let them master it by himself using those first principles.

This discussion is very interesting! Thanks to the person who started it.

[Diego Mesa]

Could you share that manual? Im very interested in using it!

[Guille Rmo]

Hi Furicle. I understand you are not a develope and thus you have a hard time using docker, node.js, etc. 

However, TW5 is actually easy to use without servers and development tools. 

You just save the web page with ctrl + s and then you open it again. 

As simple as that. 

This is one of the most important goals of this app's, a serverless one page, one file application that won't need external tools, other than a modern browser.

[Diego Mesa]

Do you guys think it would be useful to move this discussion to github under a "Improve New User Onboarding Experience" issue? That way we can have a larger discussion and perhaps generate some action items?

[Abraham Samma]

I stress the phrase WORK IN PROGRESS.

https://cdn.rawgit.com/abesamma/TW5-editions/e387d7fe/empty.html

[Abraham Samma]

Seconded

[Furicle]

Seems reasonable, except of course some of the issues are around related projects rather than TW itself...

[Mark S.]

Actually you can't save with Ctl-S. If you do the resulting file will be corrupted. You have to use the Save checkmark button inside of TW.

Good luck --
Mark

[JD]

This has been mentioned before, but couldn't the community agree to use a different, multi-user wiki for the help file, or manual, or watchamacallit... At least, while TW5 remains single-user and incapable of that task? 

I'm thinking of wiki-how and fandom community wikis, for example, whose contents get filled so easily. Very entry-level, with links to related Google Groups threads and permalinks to popular personally-maintained tiddlywikis, while a simpler write-up hasn't been written in yet by a contributor...

Apologies if this is an ignorant question.

[Ste Wilson]

We do have a Reddit... (Cheers again Riz)

[Abraham Samma]

There's TW5's github repository wiki.....

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[Riz]

Thank you Ste.

Yes, we do have reddit. Much of the features demanded in the couple of threads have been met in there. For eg:

1) It is free.
2) We can tag and categorize the posts. We can also tag/flair users. If you click on a tag, it will show all the posts with same tag. Especially useful if you want to check out some things like "what all plugins are available to TW5".
3) We can have multiple community moderaters with different levels of access.
4) A sidebar with relevant intoductionary information and important links.
5) A wiki, the editing access of which can be made open to all or multiple. authorised personnel.

It is all there. We do keep it updated with major announcements from the group. So if you are interested in TW5 enough to stay up to date, but do not want to be bothered by each and every post in the group, you can either add http://www.reddit.com/r/TiddlyWiki5 to your rss feed. If you are a redditor, wowsie, do subscribe it.

Things are bit quite in there is the issue. We could use a hand, mostly if you care to announce your works in there along with the group. It will be easier for people to find your work in reddit rather than in here.

draco dormiens nunquam titillandus
Riz

[Mark S.]

The main thing that I don't like about reddit is that it seems to have been built as a forum for debate. The problem is, you can't re-edit an item. This seems a bit limiting.

-- Mark

[JD]

Wow, I've forgotten about the subreddit! When I first started using TW5 that's where I usually looked for information. The trouble I had with it is, it's mostly just plugin-posts, not much discussion (actual discussion is probably hard to do there). Is the subreddit more of a plugin directory?

[Riz]

> Is the subreddit more of a plugin directory?

I can understand why people would think that. It was initially started as a possible alternative to google group. There was a demand for a forum where people can categorize the posts, upvote on favorite responses, will have a wiki and multiple moderators responsible for the overseeing the forum. Most of the other choices with similar feature set were non-free.

However, last time such a discussion happened, it was implied that community would probably prefer either a stack-overflow based solution or TW5 based experiment called Twederation. Owing to general disinterest and my inability to convince people the necessity of an alternative to show case the available options regarding TW5 which are missed out, the discussion largely was and is still limited to google groups.

It is not all bad, however. We do still keep the forum updated. We have a wiki there that list around 200 old plugins published before subreddit was born. (those published after can be found by clicking on any of the plugin tags). In additions flairs like tutorials, adapations and tweaks enable people to explore the possibilities of TW5. I do wish more and more will post there in addition to here.

> Actual discussion is probably hard to do there.

It can't be really said that it is not a platform well suited for discussion. Keep in mind that there are subreddits ranging from Jokes(http://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes) to Worldnews(http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews) , from psychology (http://www.reddit.com/r/psychology) to AskReddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit) , all of which have over 100,000 subscribers and witness intense discussions.

> The problem is, you can't re-edit an item.

Are we talking about comments? Hmmm, it can be edited.

Anyway, my point is, if anybody is willing to write step by step tutorials for any of the complaints OP raised in the first post, we can dedicate a page a page for such tutorials in reddit. So those who have experience and is willing to contribute, please do.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Riz

The work you did on Reddit is immense.

I was a big pusher for change. But I did NOTHING practical. Shame on me (well, apart from Twitter).

I STILL think we are left with very UNKEMPT systems. And as it gets yet more complex and interestingly rich it gets even worse for a beginner, I think.

Take, for instance, SAVING TW. Now we have many excellent methods. But if you are not reading the list daily its actually, for many a newbie, more info than you can cope with. WHICH method? FOR what? HOW can I get clearer what to do?

I dunno what the solution is.

Your Reddit is v. good in that you tend to lift out the MAIN themes and its a definite plus to have it simple enough to follow main developments. But still STEERAGE is somewhat lacking I think.

There is maybe a lacking ACCESS ROUTE that is clear enough for a new user who knows nothing and is NOT interested in D.I.Y. to get up and running. That issue is partly orthogonal to which particular forum you read.

Possibly PART of the issue devolves to clearer delineation of TYPES of TW? By which I mean delineation of DIY versions from whole, finished apps (where dabbling is very secondary & its easier to say what they are).

Something like that.

Just thoughts
Josiah, x

[James A Bernard]

As a short term work-a-round, try Waterfox, its like firefox but its keeping the plugins. Tiddlyfox work well.