Development status Active | Operating system | |
 | ||
Developer(s) Jeremy Ruston and community members Initial release 30 September 2004; 12 years ago (2004-09-30) Stable release 5.1.13 / 25 July 2016; 7 months ago (2016-07-25) Repository github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/ | ||
TiddlyWiki is an open-source single page application wiki in the form of a single HTML file that includes CSS, JavaScript, and the content. It is designed to be easy to customize and re-shape depending on application. It facilitates re-use of content by dividing it into small pieces called Tiddlers.
Contents
Tiddlers
TiddlyWiki introduces the division of content into its "smallest, semantically meaningful, components", referred to as tiddlers. Each tiddler is stored inside an HTML division that contains the source text and meta data in wiki markup. The purpose with this division is to enable easy re-use of content for different narratives and in different contexts.
For example, the section you're currently reading ("Tiddlers") could be a tiddler. In the TiddlyWiki user interface it would appear as it appears here but as a separate "note" visually distinct from other tiddlers.
The underlying HTML source code (which is not what the user faces) would be something like:
This same "tiddler" could then be reused in other contexts in the wiki.
Plugins
In addition to containing text, a tiddler can be a plugin with additional JavaScript and CSS to extend TiddlyWiki. As a result, TiddlyWiki is used in a wide variety of adaptations and uses beyond that of a personal wiki. One example is for interactive graph visualization or mind-maps with the plugin TiddlyMap.
File saving
A TiddlyWiki opened from a file URI may save changes made back to the original file using one of the following techniques:
Applications
TiddlyWiki is designed for customization and to be shaped according to users' specific needs, perhaps comparable to a high-end programming language. As such, it can be shaped into a wide and arbitrary range of special applications. Examples include niche note taking applications, to-do lists, presentations, collections, authoring tools, personal databases, recipe collections, etc.
Although there are many TiddlyWiki documents on the Web, the majority of TiddlyWikis reside on personal computers or in the cloud, or are exchanged over email, in a manner similar to word processing documents and spreadsheets. It has been suggested that, as a single HTML file, or saved as an HTA file in Microsoft Windows (allowing corporate IE lockdown to be bypassed), TiddlyWiki is useful in corporate environments where red tape or IT resources might prevent the use of a wiki that requires a more complicated installation.
TiddlyWiki has been used as a Software framework to build specialisations. SocialText uses TiddlyWiki as a part of their unplugged feature.
History
License
TiddlyWiki is free and open source software and is distributed under the terms of the BSD license. The copyright of TiddlyWiki is held in trust by UnaMesa, a Non-profit organization.