Implementing a true single tiddler display mode

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Jeremy Ruston

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Aug 26, 2018, 12:24:06 PM8/26/18
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I’ve started work on improvements to give the core a true “single tiddler mode” (STM), whereby the story river is restricted to only a single tiddler at the time. The current “zoomin” storyview looks like a STM but actually keeps previously open tiddlers in a hidden-but-still-open state that has an impact on performance.

You can try out the improvements by visiting the prerelease and engaging the “zoomin” story view (other story views are not affected by these changes):


Notes:

* The familiar zoomin navigation animation is currently broken by these changes but I intend to repair it
* The “open” sidebar tab isn’t much use when there is only a single tiddler in the story river. I’ve added a “History” tab which is much more useful. However, I’m not happy to add another top level sidebar tab, so I want to find another way of resolving things
* The “close tiddler” button in the view toolbar isn’t very useful in STM. I’d like to replace it with a button that navigates back to the previous tiddler in the history
* Switching back and forth between drafts is much easier with the new “draft indicators” — try editing a tiddler, and then using the sidebar to navigate to another tiddler (see https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/3409)

You can see the implementation details on GitHub:

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/pull/3412

Any feedback or questions welcome,

Best wishes

Jeremy.

BJ

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Aug 26, 2018, 12:58:46 PM8/26/18
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This will be a great improvement.

If you close a tiddler the story is left blank...

Mat

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Aug 26, 2018, 1:55:20 PM8/26/18
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Thank you Jeremy.

Possibly not a new issue but I didn't notice it previously: Different tiddlers have different width causing the sidebar to shift in position, when otherwise using the standard settings on tiddlywiki.com. This is easily reproduced this by inserting a link to HelloThere at top of Controlpanel so it's easy to switch back and forth.

<:-)

Mat

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Aug 26, 2018, 1:58:20 PM8/26/18
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Errata

Hm, sorry, it seems I was wrong. I was fooled by the on-off appearence of the side-scroll, i.e it is this that shifts the sidebar position not the individual tiddlers.

<:-)

Mark S.

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Aug 26, 2018, 3:57:19 PM8/26/18
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TW is definitely an amazing piece of engineering!

Is there (or will there be) a way to turn off the animation? I find it a bit distracting. I imagine it even becomes visible on older tablets, etc.

I'm curious about the "stacked" view. When the cards/tiddlers you can't really see nor access the cards that are behind the top card. Would the finished version allow one to click on the edge of a card and have it come forward?

Thanks!
-- Mark
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Jon

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Aug 26, 2018, 4:34:09 PM8/26/18
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Mark, you can set the animation duration to zero in the Control Panel

Regards
Jon

Jeremy Ruston

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Aug 26, 2018, 6:01:00 PM8/26/18
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Hi Mark


On 26 Aug 2018, at 20:57, 'Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki <tiddl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I'm curious about the "stacked" view. When the cards/tiddlers you can't really see nor access the cards that are behind the top card. Would the finished version allow one to click on the edge of a card and have it come forward?

The stacked view isn’t new; it’s been lurking in the prerelease for a year or two under an “experimental” banner. To make it more useful you should turn on “Display tiddler titles as links” in control panel settings:


Best wishes

Jeremy.

David Gifford

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Aug 26, 2018, 6:14:56 PM8/26/18
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Yay! Now I won't be "cheating" anymore by using the Zoomin view for a purpose for which it wasn't made!

Also I second the goal of having TW 'navigate' back to the previous tiddler. But why a separate button? Why not make that part of the close tiddler button when in STM?

Blessings,

Dave

Mark S.

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Aug 26, 2018, 6:16:23 PM8/26/18
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Thanks for the explanation. I had noticed that it was first introduced in 5.1.8.

The last one in the set, even if you only have 2 tiddlers open, is essentially illegible, being too small to read. I guess that's part of why it's still experimental. 

Thanks!
-- Mark

David Gifford

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Aug 26, 2018, 6:21:41 PM8/26/18
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ah, I answered my own question. If the close button always took you to the previously opened tiddler, you could never close them all except with a close all button. Also, I imagine it would be an endless loop of the current and previous tiddler, since when closing one and opening the previous, the new 'previously open' tiddler would be the one just closed.

Jeremy Ruston

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Aug 26, 2018, 6:43:23 PM8/26/18
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Hi Dave

ah, I answered my own question. If the close button always took you to the previously opened tiddler, you could never close them all except with a close all button. Also, I imagine it would be an endless loop of the current and previous tiddler, since when closing one and opening the previous, the new 'previously open' tiddler would be the one just closed.

On Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 5:14:56 PM UTC-5, David Gifford wrote:
Yay! Now I won't be "cheating" anymore by using the Zoomin view for a purpose for which it wasn't made!

Also I second the goal of having TW 'navigate' back to the previous tiddler. But why a separate button? Why not make that part of the close tiddler button when in STM?

I think it may be worth experimenting with having the “close tiddler” toolbar button also perform a navigation to the previous tiddler in the history stack; the current behaviour feels counter-intuitive after one has clicked on a link. The process would stop when the history stack is consumed. Perhaps we’d also need a way to clear the history stack, analogous to “close all” in the “Open” sidebar tab.

But, I’m also keen to find another way to expose the history list. Having a tab called “History” next to “Recent” seems confusing, and highlights that we’ve got a fundamental difference of  between “recent” from the readers perspective vs. that of the writer.

Mark bought up the stacked view that’s in the prerelease. I had envisaged the stacked view as a sort of visual breadcrumbs, functionally very similar to the history tab. One of the issues with it is the same as the zoomin story view: all navigated tiddlers are open in the story river. Perhaps we can meld all of this to update the zoomin story view to show the history list along the same lines as the stacked story view, but just rendering the titles, rather than the entire tiddler as the stacked view does at present.

Best wishes

Jeremy




Blessings,

Dave

On Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 11:24:06 AM UTC-5, Jeremy Ruston wrote:
I’ve started work on improvements to give the core a true “single tiddler mode” (STM), whereby the story river is restricted to only a single tiddler at the time. The current “zoomin” storyview looks like a STM but actually keeps previously open tiddlers in a hidden-but-still-open state that has an impact on performance.

You can try out the improvements by visiting the prerelease and engaging the “zoomin” story view (other story views are not affected by these changes):


Notes:

* The familiar zoomin navigation animation is currently broken by these changes but I intend to repair it
* The “open” sidebar tab isn’t much use when there is only a single tiddler in the story river. I’ve added a “History” tab which is much more useful. However, I’m not happy to add another top level sidebar tab, so I want to find another way of resolving things
* The “close tiddler” button in the view toolbar isn’t very useful in STM. I’d like to replace it with a button that navigates back to the previous tiddler in the history
* Switching back and forth between drafts is much easier with the new “draft indicators” — try editing a tiddler, and then using the sidebar to navigate to another tiddler (see https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/3409)

You can see the implementation details on GitHub:

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/pull/3412

Any feedback or questions welcome,

Best wishes

Jeremy.

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TonyM

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Aug 26, 2018, 8:17:15 PM8/26/18
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Jeremy,

A little feedback if I may. The title says "Implementing a true single tiddler display mode
and perhaps it is in some ways "true single tiddler", but from this description I was looking forward to something it is not.

I was interested in the ability to use a link to a tiddler in a wiki (from another tiddlywiki or website) that opened a tiddler, somewhat like a permalink would do, except to open the selected tiddler and nothing but that tiddler, no side bar, toolbar (optionally) nothing. An example use case is a link or iframe to https://tiddlywiki.com/#Filter%20Operators as a reference.

I understand this would load the whole wiki to display a single tiddler, I am fine with that because I may want to build sophisticated tiddlers but it would be helpful if we could give a single tiddler total focus and no apparent chrome around it.

One of my motivations is when I have content I want to share with the world and its in my Wiki, in a tiddler, I want to publish it to the world without needing tiddlywikis interface to be there by default. I also want to do this for myself such as open in new window single tiddler views. The interaction with the underlying wiki can be dealt with buy the tiddlers author.

PS I am looking forward to the new release like an Easter egg hunt.

Thanks
Tony

Arlen Beiler

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Aug 27, 2018, 6:08:20 AM8/27/18
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That actually sounds like the easiest thing to do out of everything discussed here. All you need to do is hide the sidebar and make the background the same color as the tiddler. Then insert a widget in the tiddler that prevents navigation and put the tiddler content inside that. Or just don't have any navigation in the tiddler. 

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Mat

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Aug 27, 2018, 7:44:24 AM8/27/18
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Regarding navigating back to previous tiddler (and assuming you're talking generally about this and not just for zoomin story view);

I have used a "light version" of this for some time now, in classic story view; By "light" I mean that it's not really the previous tiddler that's scrolled into view but the tiddler above the closing one rather than the one below it. This is often the previous tiddler. So, if you use the default setting where clicking a link in a tiddler opens the new tiddler to below the current, then this scroll-back-upwards when closing is absolutely superior to scrolling down. Here is the code to remake the close button for this:

title: $:/core/ui/Buttons/close
tags
: $:/tags/ViewToolbar
text
:
<$button message="tm-close-tiddler" tooltip={{$:/language/Buttons/Close/Hint}} aria-label={{$:/language/Buttons/Close/Caption}} class=<<tv-config-toolbar-class>>>
<$list filter="[<tv-config-toolbar-icons>prefix[yes]]">
{{$:/core/images/close-button}}
</$list>
<$list filter="[<tv-config-toolbar-text>prefix[yes]]">
<span class="tc-btn-text"><$text text={{$:/
language/Buttons/Close/Caption}}/></span>
</$list>
<$action-navigate $to={{{ [list[$:/StoryList!!list]before<currentTiddler>]}}}/
>
</$button>

...

Apropos story views and history lists;

BJ has StoryTopTabs to show tiddlers sticking up as tabs in the same way that browsers show tabs. I used the TWC version of this a lot and it was very useful with immediate access to everything. On the downside, it's not very pretty when you have several such tabs. 

Also, years ago I outlined the "Article Storyview" concept. Hope to implement it one sunny day ;-)

<:-)
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Mat

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Aug 27, 2018, 7:53:19 AM8/27/18
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TonyM wrote:
I was interested in the ability to use a link to a tiddler in a wiki (from another tiddlywiki or website) that opened a tiddler, somewhat like a permalink would do, except to open the selected tiddler and nothing but that tiddler, no side bar, toolbar (optionally) nothing. An example use case is a link or iframe to https://tiddlywiki.com/#Filter%20Operators as a reference.

I agree that this would be desirable. I guess it would be similar to tiddlers exported in html format. TiddlySpace had something like this (TiddlySpace is not to be confused with TiddlySpot). Shouldn't this be relatively simple to do with the node version of TW? 

<:-)

Mat

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Aug 27, 2018, 7:56:20 AM8/27/18
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BTW, for this type of single and totally independent tiddlers I think we should try to implement optional "static solutions" for as many of the widgets/macros as we can. CSS is getting increasingly more powerful and a lot of things that were only possible with js can now be done on CSS, which works in static presentations. 

<:-)
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Mat

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Aug 27, 2018, 8:55:21 AM8/27/18
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@TiddlyTweeter wrote:
Lets not throw the baby into hot-water urging "static" on this. I think TonyM's point was that we can increase flexible intelligence in delivery via single Tiddler (no cruft) Mode. I think performance is likely to be good.

Well, the "performance" is to a great extent a result of the wiki, not the tiddler and if I understand Tony then he wants tiddlers that really are as independent as possible, not just styled to hide the rest of the TW. I also find this concept very appealing... even if I must admit I'm not quite sure what I'd do with them ;-)

<:-)

TonyM

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Aug 27, 2018, 9:06:54 AM8/27/18
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Folks

The key for me is a way to access the single tiddler view of a tiddler in any wiki which I presume means being able to address it on the address line/url

This is why am requesting it in a release as we will be able to avoid installing something to achive it.

For wikis we own, perhaps even host with update we could perhaps already host say a survey questionnaire tiddler that is all that some one sees from following the url.

Regards
Tony

TonyM

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Aug 27, 2018, 9:13:12 AM8/27/18
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Josiah,

Agreed, I want interactive not static.

The open in new window option could be fixed to use css correctly, more faithfully display the tiddler content then provide a way to activate it through the address line eg: wikiaddress###tiddlername

Regards
Tony

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Jeremy Ruston

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Aug 27, 2018, 9:38:09 AM8/27/18
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As far as I can tell, this topic has absolutely nothing to do with the “single tiddler mode” I was referring to in the original post. STM is about changing navigation behaviour to restrict the story river to contain a single tiddler.

This new topic appears to be about an enhanced permalink capability; it’s actually a pretty terrible idea to call it “single tiddler” anything because it’s really about “permaview” functionality: it’s incredibly useful to be able to link to multiple tiddlers at once.

This is hot on the heels of a long discussion about how terrible we all find Google Groups.

The thing is that keeping any discussion focussed and actionable takes a bit of self discipline. This topic is was originally a request for feedback about a new feature. Wilfully turning it into a discussion of something else makes everybody else reading this thread confused. By letting the mis-labelled discussion flourish here there’s a chance that we’ll end up persisting the confusion about what “single tiddler mode” means.

Anyhow, I suggest that we close this topic, I’ll try to pull out any useful feedback about the work I’m doing into the GitHub ticket, and perhaps it’s worth starting a new thread to discuss this “barebones permaview" idea.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

On 27 Aug 2018, at 14:24, @TiddlyTweeter <Tiddly...@assays.tv> wrote:

Ciao Mat


@TiddlyTweeter wrote:
I think performance is likely to be good.
 
Mat repled ...
Well, the "performance" is to a great extent a result of the wiki ...

Yes but. The assemblage of the sidebar is significant. Its not just size, its complexity for render. Reducing all "cruft" I think will improve performance?

And, why have it when you don't need it?


I also find this concept very appealing... even if I must admit I'm not quite sure what I'd do with them ;-)

I think TonyM, or at least I, was pointing to Use Cases where the content of the TW could contain disparate items AND gets focused on ONE at a time, un-menued.

An example could be a Newsletter. You only want the latest to show, or one where a topic is directly addresses a raised issue. Listing them all would more be a service for archivists than end-users, if you get what I mean?

In short, many Use Cases, I think benefit from minimal delivery of "ALL BUT ONLY" in one Tiddler/"Effective Page".

Best wishes
Josiah

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@TiddlyTweeter

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Aug 27, 2018, 10:35:56 AM8/27/18
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Ciao Jeremy

Out of respect for you I am going to delete all my posts in this thread.

I do want you to note I have no idea what the problem is, but I hope to understand it. I'm basically thick and I guess the intent is yet beyond my skill set.

Best wishes
Josiah

Jeremy Ruston

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Aug 27, 2018, 10:41:11 AM8/27/18
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Please don’t delete them! Much better to leave things intact. I’m not angry in the least

Best wishes

Jeremy

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David Gifford

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Aug 27, 2018, 10:44:42 AM8/27/18
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Thanks Jeremy,

I like some of the ideas I am hearing from others, they sound interesting. But I did think the thread got derailed, and I had hoped it wasn't prompted by my suggestion about adjusting the close button. I was actually going to post to express my desire that the other ideas didn't crowd out or even replace the single tiddler mode idea. I am looking forward to STM, and was starting to worry it might get morphed into somthing else entirely. Thanks for beating me to it.

TonyM

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Aug 27, 2018, 6:57:56 PM8/27/18
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Jeremy,

I am sorry, my post was possibly the cause of this "bifurcation" of the threads discussion however I think my post was directly related to this thread, as I was pointing out the whole thread sounded like something It was not. Fortunately or unfortunately, the alternate subject clearly generated a lot of interest and fitted nicely under the post title, which I suppose was my point in the first place. 

I did not mean to cause this, but it was genuine feedback that started this. To me this illustrates the problem with email based forums, they are hard to divide and continue when even for genuine reasons they go in more than one direction.

I will extract what I can about the subject I introduced (if its not being deleted) and start another thread as you suggest (If not already started).

Please look at the new thread because I genuinely believe it relates to this one. The permalink issue is only to permit external reference to a single tiddler display.

Regards
Tony

Stobot

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Aug 30, 2018, 6:13:52 PM8/30/18
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Jeremy,

I'm not sure if you're still monitoring this thread based on the previous comments, but for myself and all of the users at my company, a purpose-built single page mode would be great. In almost all circumstances my goal is to make it seem more 'normal' to my end-users (Microsoft dominated U.S. corporate environment).

I'm adding users based on overlap with SharePoint sites / lists. The keys to increase adoption at my company based on the user feedback I'm getting is a few things:
  1. General theme. People are used to header based buttons and left-navigation. The "Material Theme" posted on the Groups here has got me pretty close.
  2. Single page mode. People get confused by all of these "floating windows" and accidentally close them all leaving it empty. The pre-TW5 with single page mode was closer to my current desires.
Personally I don't mind the default design, but from a "send to people and they intuitively know how to navigate it" standpoint, the single page mode would help a lot. See screenshots if are interested in seeing how far I've got compared to a SharePoint example.

Just wanted to add a different perspective. I would *kill* for a SharePoint theme that lumps all of this together.
Material Design.jpg
SharePoint.jpg

PMario

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Aug 31, 2018, 2:22:44 AM8/31/18
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Hi Stobot,

The new Zoomin view also creates an empty story, if your users close all the tiddlers from the history. .. BUT there is a way to create an "empty-story" message. See the last paragraph at: https://tiddlywiki.com/#HistoryMechanism

So if you create a "Dashboard" which contains a summary with the most important links, I think you can go a long way.

- Open / Create a new tiddler named: $:/config/EmptyStoryMessage
- Add: {{Dashboard||$:/core/ui/ViewTemplate}}
- Save

So the Dashboard tiddler will always show up if the story is empty. ... This tiddler can't be closed.

If you want to hide the Dashboard from your users just name it: $:/_stobot/Dashboard instead of Dashboard

hope that helps

have fun!
mario

Sylvain Naudin

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Aug 31, 2018, 4:57:43 AM8/31/18
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Le vendredi 31 août 2018 08:22:44 UTC+2, PMario a écrit :

The new Zoomin view also creates an empty story, if your users close all the tiddlers from the history.

In my day life, and since long time, I use felixhayashi's plugin called respawn that open default tiddler when river story is empty. Must have in my case !

Jeremy Ruston

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Aug 31, 2018, 5:21:13 AM8/31/18
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Hi Stobot


I'm not sure if you're still monitoring this thread based on the previous comments, but for myself and all of the users at my company, a purpose-built single page mode would be great. In almost all circumstances my goal is to make it seem more 'normal' to my end-users (Microsoft dominated U.S. corporate environment).

Great. I've also extensively used "zoomin" storyview for projects intended by people not familiar with TiddlyWiki. I quite like the way that compared to a normal site design the tiddlers still have a discernible visual identity but I'm also interested in finding greater simplicity by exploring presentations that melt the tiddler boundary away, making the tiddler be the page.

I'm adding users based on overlap with SharePoint sites / lists. The keys to increase adoption at my company based on the user feedback I'm getting is a few things:
  1. General theme. People are used to header based buttons and left-navigation. The "Material Theme" posted on the Groups here has got me pretty close.
  2. Single page mode. People get confused by all of these "floating windows" and accidentally close them all leaving it empty. The pre-TW5 with single page mode was closer to my current desires.
Personally I don't mind the default design, but from a "send to people and they intuitively know how to navigate it" standpoint, the single page mode would help a lot. See screenshots if are interested in seeing how far I've got compared to a SharePoint example.

Just wanted to add a different perspective. I would *kill* for a SharePoint theme that lumps all of this together.

It looks very do-able -- perhaps you'd be interested in sponsoring somebody here to build it? I'm sure JD would do an excellent job, for instance!

Best wishes

Jeremy

 

Riz

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Sep 7, 2018, 3:40:02 AM9/7/18
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Hi Jeremy

Was taking the true-single-tiddler option for test for some time now. I understand you have changes in mind for the history tab. It is useful the way it is now, I must admit. However I hope you have noticed that when a new tiddler is created/edited, the "draft.of" tiddler gets added to the history tab. Eventually when you close tiddlers one by one, there will be a lot of missing tiddlers titled "Draft of x". I know this is an obvious bug and you must be working on a solution. Just pointing out.

sincerely

Riz

Riz

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Sep 7, 2018, 4:06:50 AM9/7/18
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And possibly persisting history tab contents across refreshing/booting?

Mat

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Sep 19, 2018, 4:19:53 AM9/19/18
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@Jermolene

Issue: Cancelled tids appear in the history tab and clicking the title there goes to a tiddler with prefix "Draft of". 

Detailed steps:

Click the History tab in sidebar
Click "+" to create new tiddler
Click the edit-tiddlers cancel / discard changes button

In the History list you now see "Draft of 'New Tiddler'"

I question if cancelled drafts should show there at all
...but more crucially, clicking it goes to the (missing) tiddler "Draft of 'New Tiddler'". IMO, if it should go anywhere it should open this in edit mode and titled "New Tiddler". 

<:-)

Mohammad

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Dec 25, 2020, 10:43:10 AM12/25/20
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Hi Jeremy,
 I want to put a reminder for this PR. I would like to have your opinion about Solo story view. There were discussions on History Tab and Open Tab which was a little confusing.
But I think other aspects were discussed thoroughly.

I use zoomin and Classic View for slideshow, but each has some drawbacks. I think solo in my case will be more efficient and also it has no animation.

Thank you again
Mohammad

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