Tiddlydesktop - any reason to use it instead of firefox?

[Mikel Azure]

I had a look at Francis'  youtube tutorials, the final one, which is four or so years old now, introduced Tiddlydesktop as a solution to problems with Firefox security stuff.  

I liked the idea of a Tiddlywiki specific 'browser', it just seemed elegant.  However,  are there substantive advantages to using it instead of firefox?

Mikel A

[TiddlyTweeter]

DOWN: There is no direct support for Android/mobile version (though you can maintain wikis in DT that can then be uploaded and they will be fine Android-ed).

UP: The KEY thing is that TiddlyDesktop, when you understand it, is NOT a one-way-ticket. (Essentially it is a chrome shell with built in saving and backup and more flex than a normal browser).

FWIW: I use it with single-file wikis I  can ALSO edit in FF (but not simultaneous).

The issue is really one of those "man, it can get complicated!"  understanding the FLEX of TW :-) 

TT

[Mark S.]

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 1:01:12 AM UTC-8 TiddlyTweeter wrote:

DOWN: There is no direct support for Android/mobile version (though you can maintain wikis in DT that can then be uploaded and they will be fine Android-ed).

Actually more like "neutral". There is no direct support for FF on Android either now with the current extension security changes. 

To me, the two big "downs" of TD is that you can't zoom in and out of a page, and you can't search text on a page. Any other extra flex for TD is pretty well hidden. Perhaps you could document how to use them? Currently, certain features are broken (? generating a new data folder ).  I tend to rotate between which save methods I use. I've found that even a simple direct node instance has problems (I should make a post about "backwash" contamination). Timimi works well on the desktop. 

[Soren Bjornstad]

The nice thing about TD is that, as Mikel says, it's "elegant," and you don't have to mess around with savers...just load it up and it works. I think it's an excellent choice for new users.

That said, a few things are not ideal:

• Can't drag and drop plugins and other tiddlers from TiddlyWikis loaded in the browser (this works for some people apparently, but it doesn't work on any browser on either my Mac or my Linux PC, so it clearly doesn't work consistently). Not a huge deal since you can just export the tiddlers from the source wiki and import them in the destination wiki, but it's a bit annoying.
• As Mark said, no Control-F. I had never noticed the lack of zoom as I don't generally use it in TiddlyWiki, but if your vision isn't great I could see that being really frustrating.
• Autosaving after every change can be rather excessive at times, and the save isn't asynchronous, so the wiki can lock up for half a second or so when you finish editing a tiddler or the like. 
• No full-screen function (there's not a whole lot to hide, but the browser full-screen also hides your OS's interface elements so it could still save space on occasion).

If you have Firefox working well for you, with an effective saver, I wouldn't bother with TD.

[Mark S.]

As long as we're listing, TD often lags behind the current TW release (for use with data folders). Currently (v14, 15) it is on a pre-release, which can be problematic.