Comments are closed.
Tiddlywiki, redux
February 23rd, 2005
I’ve mentioned Tiddlywiki in the past - put (not so) simply, it’s a self-contained wiki that doesn’t need any server or database backend. Which is a complicated way of saying that you can create a Tiddlywiki and send it via email as an attachment, so that the recipient can read it without needing to connect to an internet-based server.
It’s a fiendishly clever use of HTML and Javascript - and it’s got one of the slickest interfaces I’ve seen in a wiki (not things of beauty, generally). And now there’s a server-based version - which although it loses the portability aspects, does mean that now the beauty of the interface is available as on a full-blown wiki.
Filed under Wikis |2 Responses to “Tiddlywiki, redux”
I haven’t tried Tiddlywiki (but I will), but in experimenting with other wiki applications I’ve run into two issues:
1. While wikis all have syntax systems for creating new pages, etc. I don’t necessarily consider this simple for the average user. A simple “add new page” link on your wiki home page, with a subsequent form for submitting a page would be much simpler than what I’ve seen.
2. More importantly, the structuring of wiki pages never seems easy or intuitive. I want to create a directory / tree-like structure of pages, but creating categories, and/or linking pages together is not obvious / uber-easy.
Writing wiki pages, and editing wiki pages is uber-easy, there’s no question, which explains a good part of their popularity, but the problems I’ve listed above are just too frustrating from the experimenting I’ve done to date.
I’d agree with both points - I think one of the reasons that wikis are confined to relative geek ghetto is that they don’t have a point-and-click Word-like simplicity that ‘normal’ end users are comfortable with.
Once you’re through that learning curve, then the utility offsets the inconvenience - but it can be a slow process that a lot of people are unwilling to go through.