Re: NoteStorm 2 for getting newbies hooked on TiddlyWiki

[Scott Simmons]

Pretty sharp!

I'm a sucker for screencasts, and this one you've included with the latest version was a big help in understanding how you've nested the concepts of indices, notelists, and notes.  (Frankly, I was a little baffled when I played around with an earlier version of NoteStorm — mainly because I use a different schema in my own TiddlyWikis and wasn't used to thinking that way.  Watching your walkthrough brought me up to speed right away.)

You remain a true hero of the people for making TiddlyWiki accessible to newbies.  Whenever I hand out a blank TiddlyWiki, I always include a link to TW for the Rest of Us.  :)

[David Gifford]

Thanks Scott!

[Morris Gray]

That is a very fine job Dave it's a very usable out-of-the-box TW, congratulations. Your instructional video is an absolute delight, very well done.

Morris

[David Gifford]

Thanks Morris! Nice to see you floating around here again. Where had ye been off to?

Dave

[Morris Gray]

On Wednesday, August 29, 2012 8:29:41 PM UTC+10, David Gifford wrote:

Thanks Morris! Nice to see you floating around here again. Where had ye been off to?

Dave

Waiting for you to generate a mechanism for me to turn my thought showers into a note storm.

Morris :-)

[Daniel Baird]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:03 PM, Scott Simmons <goo...@secret-hq.com> wrote:

You remain a true hero of the people for making TiddlyWiki accessible to newbies.  Whenever I hand out a blank TiddlyWiki, I always include a link to TW for the Rest of Us.  :)

I second this.. I've always thought that newbie accessibility was the single biggest factor affecting how popular TW is (and therefore the number of developers, plugins, new features being explored, etc etc), and Dave you've always been there, paving the pathways.  Well done sir.

;Daniel

--
Daniel Baird
I've tried going to the XHTML <bar /> a few times, but it's always closed.

[David Gifford]

Muchos thank yous, Daniel!

Dave

[Mark S.]

Very nice implementation.

I notice that at the top level notelist produces a list of tiddlers.

At levels below that, it produces a list of tiddlers AND their contents. If you have several IFRAMES,  or even some large tiddlers, the page becomes full quickly. It might help if a  note list could be displayed either as a list of tiddlers or as the contents of the tiddlers, perhaps depending on which link the user selects..Just a thought.

Very nice in any case.

Mark


On Tuesday, August 21, 2012 1:05:52 PM UTC-8, David Gifford wrote:

Hi all

Created a new version of NoteStorm http://www.giffmex.org/NoteStorm.html that I am finding very fast for note-taking. There is a (hokey, I admit) video tutorial in it, as well.

I would love your feedback on it.

Blessings

Dave Gifford

[Mark S.]

Oh, what do the New Project and New Article button/links do?

Thanks!
Mark

[Mark S.]

Just noticed. The font size increase/decrease don't seem to work on notes. Only on lists. Is that how its supposed to work? I know for myself that I need font changes more in blocks of text (like notes) than in lists where there is some separation to help the eyes out.

Mark

[David Gifford]

Hi Mark

Thanks for the helpful feedback.

I am not sure how I could implement your suggestion about having two different kinds of ways to display notes in notelists, and I have a feeling most people would find it confusing. It seems a simpler solution for iFrames just to create a link within a note to another tiddler in which you create the iFrame.

The new article and new project buttons, I think, are a big waste of time, and I am tempted simply to get rid of them. Basically the idea was to have users create a link within a parent tiddler to a new child tiddler, but don't create the child tiddler by opening the link but by clicking on new project or new article, and giving it the title that you put in the parent tiddler. Basically so you could have tagged articles and notelists linked to from a note. Kind of complicated for newbies and I found I myself didn't use it either.

For increasing and decreasing the font size on notes, it doesn't work because notes have a set font size. You can change it by opening Stylesheet and delete the font-size part of this line:

div[tags~="note"] .viewer {font-family:'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; margin-top: 2em;} 

Hope that helps!

Dave

[David Gifford]

By the way, if anyone would like to see two cool notelists I created with NoteStorm, see these links

http://www.giffmex.org/recursosgiffmex.html#[[Algunas%20preguntas%20de%20reflexi%C3%B3n%20acerca%20de%20la%20est%C3%A9tica%20y%20la%20filosof%C3%ADa%20del%20arte]]
 http://www.giffmex.org/recursosgiffmex.html#[[Las%20herramientas%20de%20un%20intelectual%20cristiano]]

They are philosophy notelists in Spanish. I created a CSS class for a big, colored font using a font from Google Web Fonts and also added that font to MarkupPostHead. I think iPads and maybe Macs in general can't access these web fonts for some reason. At least when I go to the Apple store the iPads and Macs in the store display Google web fonts as Arial.

Dave

[Mark S.]

Thanks for the reply, Dave.

I got the font fixed.

I noticed that when a tiddler is saved as a note, the title doesn't show except up in the tab. When it was saved as an article, the title shows up at the top of the tiddler as in the standard TW. I sort of like having the title right in front of me, but maybe others don't.

Thanks again,
Mark

[Mark S.]

Hi Dave,

You probably know this already, but there's a few places in there still showing english. "More", and all the tooltips for increase font, decrease, etc.

I see the file size is up to almost 1M. But I bet more than half of that is javascript. It takes about 10 seconds to close out a tiddler on my machine. This would be intolerable to me if I had a lot of data to add. This to me is one of the main drawbacks of TW -- it hits a wall when it comes to updates on large files. Searches are still lightning fast though. I guess you could use a secondary TW to create new content and then import it as needed. Most of the users will be just using it to search anyways.

Have fun,
Mark

[David Gifford]

10 seconds to close out a tiddler? In which, the Spanish link I put up here? Or NoteStorm? I don't have that problem. Just wondering.

Dave

[Mark S.]

In the Spanish link. I imagine the time varies with the capabilities of your machine and how much memory is available at the moment.

Mark

[David Gifford]

Hi Mark

Okay, finally I have a moment to respond.

First, I am curious what you meant when you said my file was "up to almost 1M". Notestorm is 652 kb, and the Spanish one is over 3 MB. But even the Spanish one works fast for me, and I don't have a brand new machine or anything terribly fancy, just a HP laptop that is two years old.

Second, wow, I open tiddlers, edit them, save them, close them on that file, and everything is instantaneous. Did you have the right sidebar open? Sometimes that slows things down. See my old tips at http://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html#[[Tips%20for%20speeding%20up%20performance%20on%20large%20TiddlyWikis]]. The problem shouldn't be the file in normal use. It is probably either something about your computer, your web browser, or something you are doing? Maybe someone here can help you?

Finally, an explanation about the "notes". My original idea was that when in a notelist, opening a note would let you see just the text of the note, with no clutter, in big text. The idea is that the notes would be short, like quotes, thoughts, stats, etc. And hitting the random button would call them up, and all you would see would be the note text, like using a random quote generator. Since the default tiddler title is the date and time stamp, it would also detract from the aesthetic of the presentation of the note. And I figured if someone put a title for their tiddler, the title wouldn't be visible from the notelist anyway, unless they hover over the @ symbol. So they would create a tiddler title, then not see it in the notelist, and it would be confusing for them. What I do personally is if I have a title I want to see, I type it in the tiddler text itself. I only change tiddler titles if I need to order the tiddlers in a certain sequence. But I don't see the tiddler titles in normal use.

Since you really want tiddler titles, that is fine, just paste the line <span class='title' macro='view title'></span> in NoteViewTemplate, above the line <div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div>. That will give you titles.

As you can tell, NoteStorm is a significantly different way of using TiddlyWiki. Normal use of NoteStorm completely bypasses the need to title and tag tiddlers, and focuses on creating the text of the note itself, saving time for the user. You are trying to use it as if it were a traditional TiddlyWiki. I recommend NOT adding the line that I gave you above, and putting a title in bold text in the first line of the tiddler text, and seeing if that works for you. I think you will like it once you try it for a while.

But defintely, if you figure out precisley why your use of NoteStorm is so slow, let me know. It really should work quickly as it does for me. My personal NoteStorm is over 4 MB and shows no sign of slowing.

Dave

[Mark S.]

Hi Dave,

I got the 1 MB figure from using the right-click info-on-web-page tool in FF. Apparently that tool doesn't do a very good accounting since when I actually saved the file I could see it is 3Mb as you say.

If I open, say "Navegar el menú"  with "editar" and then use done/close or Hecho it takes about 10 seconds to close out. I don't have the right sidebar open.

I'm using a WIN XP  with 2G ram, pentium E2200 2.20 Ghz machine.

I can't imagine ever wanting to grab a tiddler at random.  I suppose it would be a good way to review "flashcards" for a class in language. I notice that almost everything at RecursosGiffMex has a title. So titles must be good, si? (yeah, could never get those accents right).

Pop quiz. When Peter was talking with Jesus at the end of the Gospel of John, which greek word for "love" did he use?

Thanks!

[David Gifford]

Hi Mark

Jesus uses agape the first couple times, then philia the third time. Peter uses philia every time.

RecursosGiffmex uses titles as they are meant to be used in NoteStorm - to navigate through indexes and notelists. But the notes themselves are all titleless unless I need them ordered a certain way.

I can envision a number of uses for random tiddlers (for example a random quote or fact to inspire you or jog your memory, similar to quotabl.es, in addition to what you mentioned about flash cards), but I can understand that others might not have need of that particular function.

Sorry again to hear how slow it is taking for you. I do the same thing and have no problem whatsoever. Anybody here have any ideas?

Dave

[Mark S.]

"New Unsorted Note" is not created with timestamp as title.

[hatgem]

Simply doesn't work. I copied both NoteStorm.html and TiddlySaver.jar to the same directory. After creating a new message, it says it can't be saved. 

[hatgem]

That is under Safari. It does work under Chrome. 

[David Gifford]

Thanks hatgem, after I get back from Nicaragua I will try to find out more about how TW functions in Safari, to see if I can figure out what to do. I confess I don't do anything with Safari. I am a Firefox guy myself.

Dave

[David Gifford]

Hi all

Created a new version of NoteStorm http://notestorm.giffmex.org/ that I am finding very fast for note-taking. There is a (hokey, I admit) video tutorial in it, as well.

I would love your feedback on it.

Blessings

Dave Gifford

(EDITED 20 July 2016 to correct URL)

[Bob Wareham]

http://www.giffmex.org/NoteStorm.html Not found no link would have had a go but no link on youtube or this site

On Tuesday, 21 August 2012 22:05:52 UTC+1, David Gifford wrote:

Hi all

Created a new version of NoteStorm http://www.giffmex.org/NoteStorm.html that I am finding very fast for note-taking. There is a (hokey, I admit) video tutorial in it, as well.

[Josiah]

Its there at http://notestorm.giffmex.org/ for me ...

[David Gifford]

Thanks Josiah. I just got home from a trip and saw this.

Dave

[Bob Wareham]

Link not working so no feedback

On Tuesday, 21 August 2012 22:05:52 UTC+1, David Gifford wrote:

Hi all

Created a new version of NoteStorm http://www.giffmex.org/NoteStorm.html that I am finding very fast for note-taking. There is a (hokey, I admit) video tutorial in it, as well.

[David Gifford]

Hi Bob

Josiah already answered you this question just recently. The working link is now http://notestorm.giffmex.org/

Dave

[jwd]

Very nice. It is a wee bit akin to a slide deck-like "TiddlyWiki in 10 Minutes" I put together to introduce co-workers to TW - but NoteStorm is much more polished than what I cobbled together.

A few suggestions:

• Not all the icons have hover text. Once I was in the example I got a little lost not recalling what the icons meant. Hover text might help the adoption by TW beginners.
  
• The 'slide deck-like' think I hacked together included a way to advance from slide to slide (card to card in your analogy) or dive into detailed slides (ala some of the HTML slide shows) by clicking icons I included in each slides' footer. NoteStorm's icon to "access tiddlers related to this one" provides most of this with links to the parent and subtopics; but what is missing are links to the sibling cards at the same level. Any thought about enabling that or some kind of next/previous navigation? Then users could close the sidebar completely and navigate notes from beginning to end.
  
• The link in "If you found NoteStormTW helpful and want to give a little back, here is a link to a page that outlines several different ways you can help us out." ends up at a 404 error page for me :-(

Thanks for the effort. I think I'll start with NoteStorm the next time I want to introduce TW's possibilities to the uninitiated.