[TW5] MyMenus Plugin Released - is there anything it can't do?

[TonyM]

Announcing the First beta release of MyMenus

My First Plugin

By People, Systems and Things (PSaT)

Better known in the TiddlyWiki Google Forums as TonyM

Thanks to all those who helped me with technical issues, and the community as a whole who has inspired my work

 

Plugin and Plugin Site

Please use this thread for initial testing and review comments

What is My Menus?

• It is designed for new and sophisticated users alike.
  
• MyMenus is a plugin that enables the user of this plugin to turn existing tiddlers into menus, or build your own.
  
• Menus can be places all over TiddlyWiki and even be made conditional, using filters, for example only show the task menu if the tiddler is tagged task
  
• MyMenus is based on the philosophy of TiddlyWiki and My Desire to support rapid development of solutions on TiddlyWiki
  

Why do I think it is revolutionary?, but of course it is you who needs to tell me if its true.

All menu items can be created with any valid Wiki Text including macros, transclusions, lists etc...
Tags and fields can be reviewed, listed and acted upon in menus
Existing TiddlyWiki features can be presented in a menu
You could even make the SideBar redundant

Once MyMenus is installed

You can quickly create menus, place and sort them anywhere
Menus can be built inside a single tiddler with little or no dependencies
As a result menus can be readily exchanged by Drag and Drop or Export

What is so good about Menu items in MyMenus?

First, the truth is it will help many end users, because it need not be so hard to do or find something.
Menu items are small pieces of wikitext, macros and capture "how to" knowledge.
You can develop your own for any customisation you have
You can leverage other plugins from your menus
You can learn and share powerful "code snipits".

Going Forward

I hope MyMenus will be a community in itself
Reusable Menu Tiddlers and Menu items will create an eco system
hopefully this will make lots of TiddlyWiki customisation and features more accessible
I expect MyMenus or customised versions of it, will help building websites for non TiddlyWiki users

What I need from the Community

Initially

Testing, reviews, Comments, Suggestions and Criticisms

           I will be traveling from 7th February to 7th of March 2018 but hope to remain active. 

 

On Going

I need you to develop and share menus and menu items and send them to me

So I can build a substantial resource we can all use

If you find something difficult to explain or fix why not make a menu tiddler that can help?

 

Screen shot demonstration

Regards

TonyM

[PMario]

Hi Tony,

It seems your server doesn't compress the file. So it needs 6 seconds to show up on my screen.
You should switch server gzip compression on, if possible.

 ... For normal sites, I personally don't wait that long.

-m

[TonyM]

Mario,

I will look into it. Thanks

Any links to the steps to do that ?

Tony

[PMario]

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 12:51:36 PM UTC+1, TonyM wrote:

Any links to the steps to do that ?

Tony

It depends on your hosting provider. There are different GUIs, that they provide their users to change server settings.
There should be a server option somewhere. ...

Which GUI do you have?
Server: apache  or nginx or both?

-m

[TonyM]

I have full multiple cPanel and WHM control.

I will research it tomorrow.

I presume we gz the file and tell the server to serve it that way?

Thank Mario

Tony

[TonyM]

Mario,

Looks Like I found it - in cpanel 

Optimize Website

A whole of site setting.

The File is around 2.2 Mb and a test zip compression reduced it to < 500 Kb 

Let see if it make a difference

Tony

[Diego Mesa]

Tony,

This is very impressive! Thank you!

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TonyM

It looks interesting. I can see its rich.

Straight-off, one thing I can see it might do well is to be able to provide simpler access to configuration tiddlers.

The "menus" are not just links--they can include Dynamic Actions. That might be worth documenting.

I need play with it more before I comment more.

Best wishes
Josiah

[PMario]

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 2:06:47 PM UTC+1, TonyM wrote:

I presume we gz the file and tell the server to serve it that way?

No the server will do the compression on the fly, and browsers will cache the content. So the second loading will be much faster.
It's probably a cPanel setting.

-m

[PMario]

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 2:25:25 PM UTC+1, TonyM wrote:

Looks Like I found it - in cpanel 

Optimize Website

A whole of site setting.

The File is around 2.2 Mb and a test zip compression reduced it to < 500 Kb 

Let see if it make a difference

If you open the browser dev-panel with F12 you can switch to the Network Tab. ... If you shift - reload the page, you should see the compressed and expanded sizes + timing.

-m

[TonyM]

Josiah,

You are spot on there.

It's quite easy to create menus that list system tags, toggle settings, access control panel functions and more. We can condense a lot of systems knowledge into a single tiddler.

I hope to see some problems solved by referring to a menu toddler that has the required features.

Please ask for or give me menus and menu items that address any need and I can publish them.

Regards
Tony

[Surya]

Hi Tony,

is it possible & how, to make the button of a menu smaller? I tried it in the $:/PSaT/MyMenus/stylesheet, but with no success at all... (for the "Jump"-menu shown in the topleftbar).

And I guess, that it is not possible at the moment, to build a menu, which is shown at the footer of tiddlers when in tiddler-edit-mode, is it? Could it be possible in the future, maybe?

Thanks for your great plugin :-)
Surya

[TonyM]

Surya,

I will look at providing more styling options in comming releases including the menu width.

I will add an edit template option in future however I am hoping a seperate plugin in development will help with bringing field edits into the view template.

Regards
Tony

[Mat]

Tony, thank you(!) for sharing and being a really overall generous contributor to our little community!

Some criticism to hopefully make it more useful: first impression from just going to the site, before testing it is tt looks way to opinionated. Is it possible to keep the things that do not need to be changed unchanged? For example the colours. I don't want to change my colours just to have menus. And the buttons deviate very much from standard TW style. Such aspects should perhaps be optional but IMO not default, and if it is default, then there should be a prominent "theme switcher" or similar. It confuses the user making them wonder what your plugin does.

Also the sidebar menu. That's a lot of buttons. Are they all for your plugin?

I would also like a prominent paragraph stating what the pluging actually does and why I should use it. I kind of see fragements of this. IMO this should be the first thing seen in a plugin(-display) unless it is totally obvious what it does.

Again, I haven't actually yet tested your plugin because I don't want to spend time on confusions like this. (Of course, anyone actually seeking a menu-making plugin is probably more forgiving).

OK, again, this is intended to be constructive and help you popularize your plugin. Thanks for sharing Tony!

<:-)

[TonyM]

Mat,

Thanks for all your observations. I will act on as many as possible in the next version.

Please clarify what you mean by opinionated, I believe have only promoted its capabilities no more or less.

Please tell me what the standard style is for a menu.

Also the buttons you see are almost all simply examples to show where you can place menus and what they may contain. Installing the macro you will only see one menu in the MyMenus tab and you can hide that. The colours are optional and respond to the existence of the standard Color field you can place in any Tiddler. No Color or icon is forced on you.

The stylesheet is available to customise the buttons but I plan to include a set of alternative styles, the method to build your own and assign a default or individual menu styles possibly in the next version.

Keep the comments comming for good or bad and please contribute your own menus or menu items once you build them.

Regards
Tony

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TonyM & Mat

By "opinionated" I think Mat meant that the visual design makes changes that are not necessary for the functions.

I believe his concern was that it muddies the waters. Meaning that we grapple with TWO issues. Your new functional additions AND a new look. Its a pretty strong combo :-).

Something like that.

FWIW, I want hold back and see the functions. Which look like they adding a lot. We can argue about CSS later.

Best wishes
Josiah

[TonyM]

Thanks Josiah,

The only visual changes, are the menus and a pallet in my standard wiki, perhaps that is interfearing with the visual perceptions?

Should I add the plugin to an empty version and have a seperate site for its demonstration as I often see?.

Tony

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TonyM

Generally TW design inclines towards a quite strict minimalism. Your stuff is different. You use variant colours and borders far more than usual. Personally I don't find it an issue. I'm much more interested in what it can do than how it looks. 

Josiah

[Birthe C]

Hi Tony,

Thank you, very nice addition to our toolbox. It works well and the look may be good for a new user, as they can at times have some difficulty understanding what is TW5 itself at what is from a plugin. What I do not like so much is that when the buttons are used in the right side the dropdown goes to the right making the text unreadable.

Hope you have a good time travelling,

Birthe

[TonyM]

Oui, Paris is lovely if not cold compared to Sydney.

Yes, The issues list on the plugin site mentions this problem on the right. My plan is to provide left justification in toprightbar and sidebar contexts. Of course some people will place button only menu items on these. In some ways the menus work better on the top bottom and left allowing the sidebar to be normally closed.

Personally top left bar and in tiddler menus make the most sense, with above story if you are using tabbed Tiddlers.

I have plans to extend these options but open to ideas.

Regards
Tony

[Mat]

Hi again Tony

yes, basically what Josiah says. By opinionated I mean it has a lot of things that kind of forces the visitor to use TW with your specific preferences. There is the theme  and there are several buttons that are not in default/empty TW but also (I'm guessing) not part of what your plugin... or at least whta a "plugin to create menus" should feature in my prejudice mind. This confuses things and draws attention away from what I'm guessing are the actual plugin aspects. ... Or just maybe the many tiddler tool buttons and sidebar buttons are required components in your menu plugin?

As for [what I assume are] the actual menu buttons, they are also colored and with double borders. You are of course 100% free to do this, but it is very much a matter of taste. Yes, a more minimalistic design is also just a matter of taste - but a minimal design makes it easier for the potential user to envision it in his/her own context and with his/her own stylistic preferences. Also, someone might think "If I install this plugin, will it then change my styling into this?" Using the default colors and buttons or very minimalistic buttons (in this case I guess that means single borders) will (IMO) diminish this fear.

That said, maybe the colors and the double borders are examples of settings in your plugin, that you want to show off? That would make sense to show then.

Again, I say this as constructive criticism, attempting to help to make your plugin embrace. Thank you for your generous contributions to our little community!

<:-)

[TonyM]

Mat,

No problems despite your impression the plugins has little impact on your themes and settings, it is infact designed to fit in with whatever you do and prefer. All you are seeing is some design choices of my own , example menus that are not included in the plugin and that have nothing to do with the plugin, except for the menu style and you can change that. Not withstanding I will present it differently when I get the chance and add a suit of styling options.

Regards
Tony

[Diego Mesa]

Hey all,

I would just like to reinorce what Tony is saying - if you just installed the plugin, your site doesnt change colors, or have a bunch of menus, or anything like that! You just install the plugin and the capability is there, not the full package seen on Tony's demo site. 

[TonyM]

Thanks Diago,

To all,

I am currently traveling (portugal) so cant do a full site update.

The mymenus plugin allows you to configure simple or sophisticated menus within tiddlers. Or simply generate a menu of tiddlers tagged by a nominated tiddler title.

On install a sidebar tab is created with a single menu providing access to the mymenus system. If this menu is hidden or the sidebar tab toggled off you would not know it was installed unless you define a menu and choose to display it.

Currently there is one menu style defined which can be changed in the plugins stylesheet. In a subsequent release, backward compatible, you will be able to choose from a range of styles or set custom styles for each menu.

The rest of the site has some simple personal settings such as trafic light buttons and a color pallet that have nothing to do with the plugin.

In time the site will contain smart menus for customisation of tiddlywiki, accessing system settings, controlling tags and fields and more, all obtained by dragging any single menu tiddler onto a tiddlywiki with the mymenus plugin installed.

I hope mymenus will prove to support the tiddlywiki community access to tip tricks and techniques in an easy to obtain way.

Regards
Tony

[Surya]

Hi Tony,

at first I really want to emphasize: I like your MyMenus :-))

Some styling one can adjust already quite easily in your stylesheet (like for example removing the borders).

For the future I'd love to have these possibilities:

1. control the height of the buttons
2. to choose, if I want a menu on the left, center or right side (in TopRightBar / TopLeftBar / TiddlerFooter/ and so on)
3. to control for every single menu, which of the symbols (which are shown at the bottom of every menu, like info, view, edit & control) I want to be shown and to control their size
4. to control for every single menu, if the content (which is shown by hover over) should be shown left-under or right-under the menu
5. the jump-menu has a bug (I think): when there are many open tiddlers it doesn't show all and is not scrollable
6. more possibilities for putting symbols on:
   1. to the page controls
   2. In edit-mode at the bottom of a tiddler (for the edit-buttons like bold and so on)
   3. to the sidebar (like the tabs)

Thanks for your plugin again :-)
Surya