[Presenting] (finally) the Customizer Plugin

[David Gifford]

Hi everyone

The Customizer plugin is finally available! Find it at https://giffmex.org/gifts/Customizer/customizer.html. It replaces earlier experiments called CleanTids and Toggle. It is a plugin to help you customize tiddlers and the sidebar in numerous ways. There are also custom sidebar elements and viewtemplate elements to add on to the plugin, and instructions on how to make your own addons.

There is a ten minute walkthrough video as well.

I am hoping it will speed up and revolutionize your TiddlyWiki workflows. I am also hoping developers will make their own add-ons for the sidebar and view template, and let me know by email dgifford (at) crcna (dot org), so I can link to them in the 'Customizer plugin store'.

I am still open to feedback and instructions on improvements: for example, how to move the button back and forth between left and right, but where the dropdowns move to the left if the button is placed to the right.

Enjoy, and blessings. Dave

[TW Tones]

David,

Thanks so much for building and sharing this. What you have done is important to many users because it provides additional configurations and tiddlers views to a wiki. When using tiddlywiki to get things done such customisations can improve ones workflow or the presentation of the result. Bravo for your effort and publishing to the community.

Some friendly feedback.

• I think a simple bulleted list of the main features would be helpful in this thread. \
• The name "customizer" is a little too generic, perhaps something like "Side bar and tiddler view customizer" or a random name Eg; "Steller customizer" - Side bar and tiddler view settings.

Regards

Tones

[David Gifford]

Thanks for the feedback, Tones!

Simple bulleted list (too bad Google Groups doesn't let us edit posts anymore):

• Viewtoolbar buttons invisible until hovering
• A button with a two-tab dropdown that provides the following features:
  • Customize what elements are visible on tiddlers in view mode and in edit mode
  • Customize what elements are visible in the sidebar
  • A reimagination of how the sidebar should work
    
  • Numerous add-on custom view template elements
  • Numerous add-on sidebar elements
  • In these add-ons there are more natural / logical groupings of tabs that are separated in the default TW ui
  • Instructions on how users can make their own custom elements

As for the name, I think I will leave it as is:

• It wasn't taken and I got there first :-)
  
• I already announced it here and on Twitter, after several previous incantations with different names. I hate to change it yet again
• It is short and concise.
• Though it is generic and broad, it describes what the plugin does - fast customization of quite a bit of TiddlyWiki's UI in one place

Thanks again and blessings!

[Jeronimo Minino]

2x wow! Just today I discovered "Toggle!".... and now this! great work! looks impressive! Thanks a lot again!

I had imported Toggle! into a couple of wikis, and it worked like a charm. 

Just in a big wiki with several plugins, after I did some customizations all toggles became unresponsive and I had to disable the Toggle! plugin.

Now I would like to give the new Customizer a go. 

Besides of having disabled the "Toggle!" plugin - Should I delete some tiddlers  before I import the new Customizer Plugin?

[ArchiMark]

3x wow! Dave.......

Looks  very cool!

In fact think you should call it Dave's CoolCustomizer plugin..... 

:-)

Thanks for sharing your great work with everyone!

Mark

[David Gifford]

@Jeronimo: if you are able to specify exactly what changes you made, that would be helpful to me. Especially if you see it happen in Customizer. You should not need to delete any tiddlers to use Cutsomizer. It adds and removes tags from a few core tiddlers, but actually in many cases I have transcluded core tiddlers into my own system tiddlers, so most of the core tiddlers are unchanged by my tagging.

@ArchiMark and @Tones, Mohammad uses Iranian placenames for his plugins. Maybe I should do the same, and use Mexico placenames in Nahuatl, like the AtzcapotzalcoPlugin, the TequisquiapanPlugin, the IxtlixochitlPlugin and of course, the TequexquinahuacriveraDelBosquePlugin  (Google maps)

The third one is pronounced more or less like "eastly SO cheetle".

[Joshua Fontany]

This looks really cool. Good to see your concepts evolve. Well done. :)

Best,
Joshua F

[jtech108]

Hello David,

Man, you made a killing with this one!

Now to think of a way to integrate into my Tiddlywiki. (^_^)

Thanks for sharing.

Many blessings,

Julio

[ludwa6]

Video demo looks great, Dave -but on my machine, there's a problem that renders the plugin essentially unusable: the icon for pulldown menu at topLH corner of window does not appear -i can only find it by clicking around blindly where i guess it should appear, based on the video demo- and then when i do manage to find it, the dropdown menu renders right over top of the story river content (left-justified), such that the two views are rendering each other unreadable.

I'm working with a fresh plugin just downloaded from the URL you posted, and i've tried it on several different TW instances (including a fresh copy downloaded from tiddlywiki.com) viewed thru 4 different browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and TiddlyDesktop -most current version of each one on Mac 10.13.6 (High Sierra).  I wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem? I hope it's an easy one to sort, because i'm very keen to enjoy the superpowers of this plugin!

/walt

[David Gifford]

Oops! Sorry Walt!

I got the same thing. So apparently despite everyone's kind words and likes and retweets, you are the only one to have actually installed it!

I had overlooked several tiddlers when I packaged the plugin. It should be good to go now!

- Dave

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[ludwa6]

Thanks Dave -it's working now, and i'm lovin' it!  /walt

[ArchiMark]

Hi Dave,

Installed the Customizer plugin and addons this morning....

Overall, great!

The one issue I had (somewhat similar to ludwa6), is that I did not understand what happened to the icons in upper right of tiddler. 

Doublechecked that I checked the box for 'Edit Toolbar' in the Tiddler Customizer tab.

Finally, I realized that you can see the icons if you hover your cursor over the place where you usually see them.

Was very worried there for a while, that I must have done something wrong.

You might want to make how this works explicit in your instructions.

Best,

Mark

[David Gifford]

heh heh, gotcha. I do mention it pretty early on in the walkthru video, but I will update the description to make sure it says something. Part of me would rather have that as a separate plugin, but it is really essential to some of the possible user configurations of the tiddlers.

[ludwa6]

Much as i love this Customizer plugin, i'm facing the prospect of making a shadow tiddler modification that "will override the default version from the plugin $:/plugins/giffmex/BookToolsSidebarAddon" -so says the standard warning message- and before i venture off on that branch, i'd appreciate anything by way of sanity check and/or survival kit that this group might have to offer.

Thing is: i'm using the "Glossary" feature in a way that may not be exactly as intended, but for my purpose, i need to add a "URL" field (for link to canonical source of definition) on the entry form that pops when you click the "+" button.  I've created a "GlossaryItemTemplate" tiddler tagged by the ViewTemplate such that it will display the extra fields in body of tiddlers tagged with "glossary", but only if the field is populated in the first place on creation.

SO: I guess i need to modify the "$:/.giffmex/BookTools/buttons/newglossaryitem" tiddler to add a URL attribute on the button action (as in bold on the end 2nd line below):

<$button class="tc-btn-invisible">

<$action-sendmessage $message="tm-new-tiddler" title="Term" tags="glossary" definition="" URL="" />

{{$:/core/images/new-button}}

</$button>

... But there's two things i'd like to know before i go and do that -essentially:

1. Am i correct in my guess about the code i would need to change? and
2. Is there anything like a best practice about making such changes to a plugin somebody else is maintaining, such that one's modifications can survive any future upgrade to the plugin?

Yours, Walt

[David Gifford]

Hi Walt

The easy solution is to create your own custom sidebar addon. Just clone my book tools addon tiddlers, adjust them as necessary, and rename them. That way when I update the plugin, your sidebar addon is not affected.

That is my whole goal of the sidebar part of my plugin, that people will create their own custom sidebars as needed, either with completely new stuff, or with modified versions of my stuff. You shouldn't need to do the sidebar addon as a plugin if you don't intend on sharing it. Just use the appropriate tags so the sidebar segment shows up in the sidebar, and if you use tabs, so that any subordinate tiddlers show up in the tabs.

Enjoy!

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