[tw] Am I alone on mobile usage of TW?

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello,

This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to all
the users that feels like me, if there is any.

Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both, TWClassing
and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better on my
mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As opposed to
TWClassic, which remind me to the first mobile web experiences: an
unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5

After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least not
in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.

I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.

In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.

Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty <http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/>
has a wiki that seems to hate mobile screens, Mat's magic
<http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle> seems to be restricted to
desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki> requires so much horizontal
scroll that I forget about what was at the left side when I reach the other
side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix to convince him to provide
an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's graphs, because on his
extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put everything on the sidebar.
A couple of alerts is enough to fill the entire screen
<https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>, popups are used
everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search mechanism on a
popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't see any advantage
on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of *6MB* on their high
bandwidth internet connections is not even noticeable. And those are just
some random examples on an entire sea of issues for mobile users.

I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.

Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

[Jed Carty]

While I personally find most mobile devices (smart phones in particular) to
be abominations I do think that you have plenty of valid points. Mainly in
the places where the low-powered computing aspects are relevant. That said
I do think that the practice that I have seen pushed so hard by many large
tech companies of removing functionality form products because it doesn't
work on the current paradigm of mobile interface is short sighted to the
point of being actively harmful to the future by teaching a generation of
technology users that if you can't do something on a 5 inch touch screen
than you can't do it. The short version is that I think it is good that
people are developing for a new thing, I think that it is horrible that
people are actively advocating dropping any alternative in favor of
something that has been deliberately designed to be limited. But that is a
rant for another time.

I can not effectively use touch screens, I don't feel that in general they
can be used effectively in the way that other interface paradigms can be,
but they tend to be unresponsive and inconsistent when I try to use them.
It may be something about my fingers. This probably colors my view of the
subject. But because of this the only experiences I get are a powerful
desktop, a variety of raspberry pi-based computers and a 14" tablet with an
active stylus. So I have next to no idea what on my site does or doesn't
work on anything smaller than that. I imagine that anything with tables is
going to be horrible and the menu at the top is more or less unusable on
most phones or smaller tablets. Recently, because of my work with the
raspberry pis and embedded computing, I have been paying much more
attention to computational load, and I am going to be working on creating
some distributed mesh networks which is going to make limiting throughput
important. I am hoping to use the pouchdb things you have made to make
everything work better.

I would like to add more to tiddlywiki to help create things that can be
easily used on a variety of screens. In my opinion the problem is that we
(as in developers/designers in general) haven't worked out rules for what
works and what doesn't yet. The general reaction being pushed is, as you
said, "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on mobile, mobile rules!"
which ignores anything other than mobile and on general principle I can't
support something that intentionally limits people. I want something that
works as well on a mobile device as on a desktop, but as long as the
accepted way to do that is to cripple the desktop version I am not going to
be involved. I am not very good at UI design in general and I haven't had
much success and I am trying to get some of the designer people I work with
to start focusing on the topic. Nothing has come from it yet though.

[Jan]

Hi Danielo, Hi Jed.
I think it depends on the Use-Case whether you need mobile.
Working on my actual project I am mostly sitting behind my desktop,
though I would really like to have a failsave way to type in Ideas into
my phone.
For my other TWC-project I really would love a better mobile Interface.
I proposed to adapt a version of mmenu(http://mmenu.frebsite.nl/) some
time ago in this list, because I think the key for mobile Menus is
drilldown-navigation. Alas I failed to do it myself...

Jan

Post by Jed Carty
While I personally find most mobile devices (smart phones in
particular) to be abominations I do think that you have plenty of
valid points. Mainly in the places where the low-powered computing
aspects are relevant. That said I do think that the practice that I
have seen pushed so hard by many large tech companies of removing
functionality form products because it doesn't work on the current
paradigm of mobile interface is short sighted to the point of being
actively harmful to the future by teaching a generation of technology
users that if you can't do something on a 5 inch touch screen than you
can't do it. The short version is that I think it is good that people
are developing for a new thing, I think that it is horrible that
people are actively advocating dropping any alternative in favor of
something that has been deliberately designed to be limited. But that
is a rant for another time.
I can not effectively use touch screens, I don't feel that in general
they can be used effectively in the way that other interface paradigms
can be, but they tend to be unresponsive and inconsistent when I try
to use them. It may be something about my fingers. This probably
colors my view of the subject. But because of this the only
experiences I get are a powerful desktop, a variety of raspberry
pi-based computers and a 14" tablet with an active stylus. So I have
next to no idea what on my site does or doesn't work on anything
smaller than that. I imagine that anything with tables is going to be
horrible and the menu at the top is more or less unusable on most
phones or smaller tablets. Recently, because of my work with the
raspberry pis and embedded computing, I have been paying much more
attention to computational load, and I am going to be working on
creating some distributed mesh networks which is going to make
limiting throughput important. I am hoping to use the pouchdb things
you have made to make everything work better.
I would like to add more to tiddlywiki to help create things that can
be easily used on a variety of screens. In my opinion the problem is
that we (as in developers/designers in general) haven't worked out
rules for what works and what doesn't yet. The general reaction being
pushed is, as you said, "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" which ignores anything other than mobile and on
general principle I can't support something that intentionally limits
people. I want something that works as well on a mobile device as on a
desktop, but as long as the accepted way to do that is to cripple the
desktop version I am not going to be involved. I am not very good at
UI design in general and I haven't had much success and I am trying to
get some of the designer people I work with to start focusing on the
topic. Nothing has come from it yet though.
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[Danielo Rodríguez]

Mainly in the places where the low-powered computing aspects are relevant.

Some phones are low powered, but some others are pure beasts.

That said I do think that the practice that I have seen pushed so hard by
many large tech companies of removing functionality form products because
it doesn't work on the current paradigm of mobile interface is short
sighted to the point of being actively harmful to the future by teaching a
generation of technology users that if you can't do something on a 5 inch
touch screen than you can't do it.

That vision is a bit limited. Limiting features of a product on a screen
where they are literally unusable is not limiting the product, is limiting
that product on that particular scenario. Those features would be available
on larger screens.

I would like to add more to tiddlywiki to help create things that can be
easily used on a variety of screens. In my opinion the problem is that we
(as in developers/designers in general) haven't worked out rules for what
works and what doesn't yet.

Probably true

I want something that works as well on a mobile device as on a desktop,
but as long as the accepted way to do that is to cripple the desktop
version I am not going to be involved.

Valid point. But not being mobile first does not mean ignoring mobile
totally.

[Josiah]

Danileo

I agree. TW is NOT responsive design built in. I think its becoming an
issue on real usage. More and more issues are arising over interface flex.
Rightly.

I have been looking at mobile usage and trialing it. Its largely
uninspiring.

Whilst much effort is put into expanding TW function, very little goes into
responsive design.

Part of that is you need people who understand the design issues. Part of
it is embracing that TW is slightly more than "my solution on my platform".
That extra step is actually quite hard because the CSS possibilities have
not been at the foreground enough.

Best wishes
Josiah

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello,
This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to
all the users that feels like me, if there is any.
Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both,
TWClassing and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better
on my mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As
an unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5
After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least not
in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.
I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.
In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.
Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty
<http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/> has a wiki that seems to hate mobile
screens, Mat's magic <http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle>
seems to be restricted to desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki>
requires so much horizontal scroll that I forget about what was at the left
side when I reach the other side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix
to convince him to provide an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's
graphs, because on his extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put
everything on the sidebar. A couple of alerts is enough to fill the
entire screen <https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>,
popups are used everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search
mechanism on a popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't
see any advantage on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of
*6MB* on their high bandwidth internet connections is not even
noticeable. And those are just some random examples on an entire sea of
issues for mobile users.
I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

['Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki]

Are you saying that you want a special TW app? Android (and IOS) apps are
built on frameworks that are completely different from the world of
HTML5/CSS/Javascript that powers TW. Facebook, Github, and Twitter have
separate teams of programmers that can work on the app apart from the
original. Basically, they have to re-create the look and feel of the
original app, without actually re-using any code.

It seems to me that it might be possible to borrow the Android code for
something like TomBoy or SimpleNote (2 open source projects) to make a
reader/editor for TW notes. But you wouldn't have all the customizable
features like lists, macros, table-of-contents, CSS themes, etc. The
question is, would anyone be happy with a TW that didn't do all those
things? Or is it the extra things that make TW so popular?

If its the HTML5 experience that you want, then it seems that its up to
individual users to customize their TW to match whatever size screen
they're on. In this regard, TW5 on AndTidWiki works better. On Firefox, TW5
doesn't seem to know about the edges of the screen and and lines continue
past the edge without reformatting.

Mark

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello,
This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to
all the users that feels like me, if there is any.
Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both,
TWClassing and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better
on my mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As
an unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5
After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least not
in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.
I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.
In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.
Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty
<http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/> has a wiki that seems to hate mobile
screens, Mat's magic <http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle>
seems to be restricted to desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki>
requires so much horizontal scroll that I forget about what was at the left
side when I reach the other side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix
to convince him to provide an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's
graphs, because on his extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put
everything on the sidebar. A couple of alerts is enough to fill the
entire screen <https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>,
popups are used everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search
mechanism on a popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't
see any advantage on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of
*6MB* on their high bandwidth internet connections is not even
noticeable. And those are just some random examples on an entire sea of
issues for mobile users.
I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Post by 'Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki
Are you saying that you want a special TW app?

Not, not even close to what I meant.

Post by 'Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki
Facebook, Github, and Twitter have separate teams of programmers that can
work on the app apart from the original. Basically, they have to re-create
the look and feel of the original app, without actually re-using any code.

Again, I'm not referring to any mobile app. Just visit github.com,
facebook.com or twitter.com from your mobile phone and you will see what I
mean. Those are web pages that feel like native apps, but they are just web
pages

[PMario]

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Again, I'm not referring to any mobile app. Just visit github.com,

That's a good reminder to file a bug at github. thx for that :)

You are right. But the only thing you can do there is switch to the desktop
version, because the mobile version is completely useless. ... And the
curious thing then is, that they are wasting 1.5cm of vertical space to
display a f*?&%$ing button to switch back to the useless mobile version.
That really sucks.

For me the desktop version works just fine on my 5inch phone.

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
facebook.com or twitter.com from your mobile phone and you will see what
I mean. Those are web pages that feel like native apps, but they are just
web pages

I don't use those. So no opinion here.

-m

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Danielo,

Allow me to invite you to engage in constructive discussion.

I take it, you are asking for a bit of what you feel like being a paradigm
shift, at least that's what I take from your words.
In that sense, do invite others to consider TiddlyWiki evolution to more
thoroughly reflect and embrace mobile.

For me, there are at least two main, quite independent things to to
consider:

1. *responsive design*
- at least with all things "core" TiddlyWiki UX should strive as much
as possible to work well on a small screen, natively, that is: with minimal
zooming (and perhaps scrolling, but I do believe you have to make amends
or, put differently, you'll have to chose one way to die or the other)
2. *data usage*
- the number of, esp. server side solutions should increase which
reduce the communication overhead to persist and retrieve tidbits to a bare
minimum
- with the exception of lazy loading skinny tiddlers, this surely
hasn't been too much of a focus
- but you appear to progress on that front with NoteSelf and
CouchDB persistence layers

So, find some sweet spots, some low hanging fruits and invite people that
are up for grabs to join-in and make things a little more mobile-friendly,
and keep doing that and reminding everyone on the importance.

But also understand that some things simply aren't designed to be
"non-zooming", e.g. TiddlyMap... so yes, you do want to find the
"full-screen" button on that one on a mobile device, if browsing the map is
what you want to focus on, while other things have to start somewhere, e.g.
"let's save the whole wiki first before we design sync adaptors that, well,
adaptively sync content back and forth."

What I'm saying is: be pragmatic about your requests. I can imagine you
would want to just use such capabilities rather than having to actually
help invent them... but, it appears, the latter is the task at hand.

Best wishes,

Tobias.

['c pa' via TiddlyWiki]

Daniello,

As a mobile user you wish your device to display web hosted TW5s in a style
that

* Minimizes horizontal scrolling
* Allows the user to switch easily between the sidebar and the story
* Allows the user to more easily choose items from a drop down select

As a TW5 developer you wish that TW5 provided better facilities to

* Create mobile friendly menus
* Create mobile friendly forms
* Jump between open tiddlers in the story
* Switch the display styles between desktop and mobile so that the
developer can see the impact of the design on mobile users

Anything else?

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi

I support what c pa says. There are some pain points to optimise, sidebar accessibility on mobile would be my first priority.
Like Danielo I read and write most often on my – really small – mobile screen in this forum and clicking on links to TW5 examples is often disappointing.
On the other hand, like most developers, I dedicate most of my spare time to personal projects. I am mainly a humble user with some knowledge of HTML and CSS and had a hard time learning TW5 which I use in the browser on my laptop only. Keeping my data private and local is my main concern, so syncing between mobile and laptop via online sevices (or an own server) is out of scope. If time is left besides job – 110% or 44h/week –, commuting, sleep, family, some sport, social/charity activities and TW5 projects I try to be helpful here and publish my stuff others could use it as is or help to improve.
Other Ideas I have for TW5 projects include server-client scenarios and I have some hope to use Danielo’s Couch(?) approach, if it can solve perceived issues like search until then. But again: We are talking about months or years until I could find time for this. I will reconsider platform choice at that time.
It would be a pitty, @Danielo, if you left, I admire your efforts and engagement!
Thaks for everything to everyone, I am sure you all do the best you can!
Thomas

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello c pa

Post by 'c pa' via TiddlyWiki
Daniello,
As a mobile user you wish your device to display web hosted TW5s in a
style that
* Minimizes horizontal scrolling
* Allows the user to switch easily between the sidebar and the story
* Allows the user to more easily choose items from a drop down select

You nailed it. Those are the things I think should be addressed.

Post by 'c pa' via TiddlyWiki
As a TW5 developer you wish that TW5 provided better facilities to
* Create mobile friendly menus
* Create mobile friendly forms
* Jump between open tiddlers in the story
* Switch the display styles between desktop and mobile so that the
developer can see the impact of the design on mobile users

Exactly. Maybe Jeremy didn't intended, but TW is actually a framework, not
a library, not an app but a complete framework. Providing those facilities
will make easier the lives of the developers that use the tiddlywiki
framework.

Maybe, more than creating mobile friendly menus, provide a generic way to
define menus, that TW will display differently depending if you are on
mobile or in desktop.

[Eneko Gotzon]

Excuse this humble computer user
​

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above?

​Danielo, ​
I understand your
​trouble
.
​ It seems that if TW wants to be an open platform ​mobile ​support for
life in the wild should be implemented.
--
Eneko Gotzon Ares
***@gmail.com

[PMario]

Hi Danielo,

I think you are right. But that's just a matter of mobile friendly themes
and time. ... It's a hell lot of work to create and support themes.
Especially support is time consuming. So imo that's the reason, why nobody
did or published them. ... yet.

As some of you may know: I don't like popups. That's why I try to remove
all of them, with something, that works for me. As a side effect this
should be good for mobile too.

On the other hand I love real keyboards and big screens, even on phones.
(OT: I think the Nokia E90
<https://www.google.at/search?q=nokia+e90&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir9ezzl6_PAhUHSRoKHQBaBx0QsAQIJA&biw=1754&bih=741>is
still superior to recent phones with on-screen keyboards.) So for me a
tablet will probably never be an option.

I personally think, that future phones will converge into desktops
<http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/06/ubuntu-phone-wireless-convergence> and
back without any friction. Android and Windows have similar concepts, but
I'm not interested in them, so I don't know links here. Apple has their own
concept, which guaranties them maximum profit.

There are only 2 points that are important for me:

- a good reading experience on mobile phones.
- good editing experience with keyboard and / or monitor attached, on what
ever device is able to handle that.

have fun!
mario

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello Pmario

Post by PMario
I think you are right. But that's just a matter of mobile friendly themes
and time. ... It's a hell lot of work to create and support themes.
Especially support is time consuming. So imo that's the reason, why nobody
did or published them. ... yet.

There are attempts to create mobile themes (in fact, I tried myself) , but
themes are very limited and can't modify TW as deep as required. Or that is
my impression

Post by PMario
As some of you may know: I don't like popups. That's why I try to remove
all of them, with something, that works for me. As a side effect this
should be good for mobile too.

Indeed. Popups are an horrible idea in general and specially on mobile. I
would like to see your workarounds for this.

Post by PMario
On the other hand I love real keyboards and big screens, even on phones.
(OT: I think the Nokia E90
<https://www.google.at/search?q=nokia+e90&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir9ezzl6_PAhUHSRoKHQBaBx0QsAQIJA&biw=1754&bih=741>is
still superior to recent phones with on-screen keyboards.) So for me a
tablet will probably never be an option.

Personally I prefer the nokia n9: https://goo.gl/images/Bd3ko8
But if we talk about something more recent, maybe you want to take a look
at pyra handled, it includes 4G connection and it is in fact a small
computer.

Post by PMario
I personally think, that future phones will converge into desktops
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.omgubuntu.co.uk%2F2016%2F06%2Fubuntu-phone-wireless-convergence&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFAUXDB7uUJdVF_YHae4_eUl3vTvQ>
and back without any friction.

That convergence has nothing to do with how information is displayed
depending on the screen size. Usually we talk abou mobile friendly, but
small screens and small windows also apply. The only thing that I can see
related to the convergence is that the same application will run both on
small and big screens, so it should be able to adapt.

Post by PMario
- a good reading experience on mobile phones.
- good editing experience with keyboard and / or monitor attached, on
what ever device is able to handle that.

We share the same objectives.

[Raymond McDowell]

For me, the advent of TW5 was and is a godsend. For 20 some years I
searched and experimented with anything that could remotely meet my needs
of desktop/mobile/laptop access, whether I was traveling in China, the
Philippines or at home in Hong Kong where I wanted to be able to access and
edit my body of work on the run or at my desk. For some time I used TW5
with a cloud service so I could have my "stuff" whenever I wanted it. I was
actually happy with my mobile experience. the menu was at the top of the
screen, the text was easily scroll-able and links worked. I've had issues,
and I've learned to work around them.

Having said that, for the past couple of years I've resided in the
hinterlands of the Philippines without a reliable internet connection. I'm
still trying to figure out how to keep my wiki updated across several
machines, including my phone and my tablet, as well as my laptop and
desktop, but there's been no issue with viewing or editing my stuff. Maybe
my needs are simple. I try to keep things as human readable as possible so
there are lots of mechanisms I simply leave alone, and my experience on my
mobile devices have remained quite acceptable to date.

On Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 12:51:47 AM UTC+8, Danielo Rodríguez

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello,
This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to
all the users that feels like me, if there is any.
Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both,
TWClassing and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better
on my mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As
an unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5
After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least not
in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.
I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.
In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.
Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty
<http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/> has a wiki that seems to hate mobile
screens, Mat's magic <http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle>
seems to be restricted to desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki>
requires so much horizontal scroll that I forget about what was at the left
side when I reach the other side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix
to convince him to provide an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's
graphs, because on his extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put
everything on the sidebar. A couple of alerts is enough to fill the
entire screen <https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>,
popups are used everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search
mechanism on a popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't
see any advantage on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of
*6MB* on their high bandwidth internet connections is not even
noticeable. And those are just some random examples on an entire sea of
issues for mobile users.
I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello Raymond

I've had issues, and I've learned to work around them.

And that exactly the problem. Your workarounds remains private to you, but
regular users still suffering from it.

I'm still trying to figure out how to keep my wiki updated across several
machines, including my phone and my tablet, as well as my laptop and
desktop, but there's been no issue with viewing or editing my stuff. Maybe
my needs are simple.

From what you expressed I think that NoteSelf may suit your needs:
https://noteself.github.io It is in beta so be cautious

I try to keep things as human readable as possible so there are lots of
mechanisms I simply leave alone, and my experience on my mobile devices
have remained quite acceptable to date.

It is quite acceptable, but there are some small frictions that make the
experience a bit rough. And that talking about raw tiddlywikis, but if you
move to custom plugins and editions you will find different scenarios.

[Anton Aylward]

Yes.
Before I got my tablet, and its not a tiny screen, it's all of 12", the
screen is the size of an 8x11 piece of paper, I used TiddlyWiki a lot. The
convenience of the tablet, not being tied to the desk and office and the
fluorescent lights and ill positioned desk is too great. Bluetooth and
lack of wires is wonderful. I use my 5" phone for quite different things
from my tablet. Heck, its a phone and my tablet isn't!

I never managed to get TiddlyWiki working satisfactory on the tablet;
that's a technical issues not a screen size issue. It seems possible but
is convoluted and as you say, bandwidth and storage as not as free and easy
as with desktops. Yes, on the one hand there are applications which drop
functionality for mobile applications, but there are some vendors that have
gone out of their way to focus on enhancing the use of mobile apps. Moving
MS-office to mobile vs the use of Google Tools is one example. There are
some good HOW-to examples of smaller screen copatibility. CSS is your
friend :-) Wikipedia offers a good example.

I don't know about using 5" or smaller (phone) screens for things like
TiddlyWiki or text input as office-like functions rather than TXTing. I
have a lot of apps on my 5" phone that are very useful but are only
applicable to a small screen, some of them involving GPS for instance.
Other things I can't imagine possible on a small screen like Photoshop. I
use a minimum 19" screen for that at my desk but I'd love one of those
Cinerama wide screens where I could put two or three 'documents' up side by
side, each the size of a piece of 8x11 paper, all better than 96dpi.

So I'm discouraged and dispirited. I keep up this subscription, read the
occasional article, but I'm not using TiddlyWiki very much these days.

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello,
This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to
all the users that feels like me, if there is any.
Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both,
TWClassing and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better
on my mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As
an unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5
After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least not
in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.
I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.
In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.
Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty
<http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/> has a wiki that seems to hate mobile
screens, Mat's magic <http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle>
seems to be restricted to desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki>
requires so much horizontal scroll that I forget about what was at the left
side when I reach the other side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix
to convince him to provide an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's
graphs, because on his extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put
everything on the sidebar. A couple of alerts is enough to fill the
entire screen <https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>,
popups are used everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search
mechanism on a popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't
see any advantage on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of
*6MB* on their high bandwidth internet connections is not even
noticeable. And those are just some random examples on an entire sea of
issues for mobile users.
I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

[David Szego]

Hi Danielo,

So... I've fixed the scroll problems with *Cardo* <http://cardo.wiki>, and
packaged up both the code and the UI tweaks as a proper theme and plugin.
That will be posted in the next day or two.

More than preventing horizontal scroll, I've added CSS media selectors to
make all buttons bigger when it thinks it's on a phone or tablet. This
makes it actually *usable *on my Note4 and any 7" 1280x800 tablet. In fact,
it shrinks quite nicely right down to 480x320 (landscape).

Even better, now that I'm only concerned about scrolling up and down,
viewing Cards (Tiddlers, see other discussion!) at full-width, I've started
to add code to allow swiping left-right on a Tiddler to switch between
Tiddlers open in the storyView, by adding a touchstart / touchend listener
to the tc-tiddler-frame div.

If anyone could offer help with *that*, I'd really love it. We can start a
separate thread.

The biggest problem* I've* seen in using TW on mobile, is that the editor
doesn't keep up with the keyboard.

Cardo <http://cardo.wiki> requires so much horizontal scroll that I
forget about what was at the left side when I reach the other side of the
wiki.

['Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki]

The biggest problem* I've* seen in using TW on mobile, is that the editor
doesn't keep up with the keyboard.

I've commented on this before. Apparently ever since TW5 there is some sort
of constant refresh loop going on. I suppose it makes the letter-by-letter
search possible, but I would prefer typing speed over a trendy search
engine. If you're a touch-typist, or typing on an ordinary tablet, you
will see definite lag. I don't experience the same lag in other apps like
Simplenote or Evernote.

BJ posted some instructions for altering a variable that may make a
difference. I believe only steps #4 and on are necessary now. (except you
probably want to make a backup still).

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tiddlywiki/1cOZyZKKFrY/rnacrjW90YMJ

I just tried it, but cranked the value up to 40000. It might be doing
something. Try it and see.

Mark

[wimm]

Post by 'Mark S.' via TiddlyWiki
BJ posted some instructions for altering a variable that may make a
difference. I believe only steps #4 and on are necessary now. (except you
probably want to make a backup still).

Jeremy has defined a tiddler called $:/config/Drafts/TypingTimeout
Search for *typingtimeout *using advanced search (magnify glass); open
tiddler; change the value to the desired value.

[wimm]

Danielo,
I also read most of the forum postings on my mobile (4.2" BB) Sometimes I
read them on an even smaller screen. Tw5 Popups (search/tags) are very
difficult, almost impossible to navigate. My personal version of Tw5
disables the popup of the search field. However when I open a Tw5 link from
this forum my personal work around does not work of course.

I have to add one other CSS challenge: Some TW's use *hover *to hide some
buttons or even the sidebar*.* Let me be very clear hovering your finger
over the *touch*screen has no effect. Please do not use these fancy
features or make it easy to disable them. My BB can luckily draw rectangles
around touch objects (in developers mode which is on all the time because
of this). So at least I know there is something on the screen, but I have
no way of telling whether the button will close or cancel my edits. Please
try it tb5.tiddlyspot.com, a great site with a lot of useful information,
however not very useful on a mobile/tablet. You can delete
$:/.tb/demo/onhover-toolbar-styles to disable the hover feature or just
remove the $:/stylesheet tag of that tiddler.

IMHO it should be easy to switch between (fancy) *desktop *and (mobile) *touchscreen
*GUI. A toggle button, some additional <$reveal statements and a
single tiddler containing one of the 2 values would allow the user to
choose between the two user interfaces.

Thanks in advance, a daily mobile tiddlywiki user.

I implemented something similar to support 3 levels of users in one TW.
Basic (mainly read), editors and system users . Buttons, tabs, options,
system search results are either shown or hidden depending on the level of
expertise. A simple icon let's the user *cycle *through all levels with 1,
2 or 3 juggling balls.

<Loading Image...>

[Mark Brown]

For me, the tw5 reading/browsing experience is great on mobile. I do find
that the default edit template is a bit clunky on mobile. Part of that
might be that i tend to turn on preview and lots of toolbar options for
convenience when on desktop , but then that creates a lot of clutter when
on mobile. However, I suspect a few css tweaks might address that quite
easily.

[Mark Brown]

<Loading Image...>
<Loading Image...>

Fiddling around with CSS, I'm finding it useful to hide most features of
the edit template when screen width is small...
... to access the full edit template I just rotate my phone. The CSS was:

@media (max-width: 480px) {

.tc-edit-fields { display: none; }

.tc-editor-toolbar { display: none; }

.tc-edit-tags { display: none; }

.tc-tiddler-preview-preview { display: none; }

.tc-tiddler-frame .tc-tiddler-preview .tc-edit-texteditor { width:100%; }

.tc-type-selector { display: none; }

.tc-edit-field-add { display: none; }

.tc-improvement-banner { display: none; }

}

[JWHoneycutt]

Hola Danielo -

As a newbie I am liable to write something that makes others roll their
eyes or think "we all know that". Despite that...

TWEdit is for mobile - right? I find it nearly useless

TiddlyNotes - better except it doesn't work either

As Noted - based upon TW engine, better user interface, and tiddlers are
broken out into a ton of little files

I am interested in an a similar application, personally.

JWHoneycutt

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello,
This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to
all the users that feels like me, if there is any.
Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both,
TWClassing and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better
on my mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As
an unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5
After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least not
in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.
I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.
In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.
Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty
<http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/> has a wiki that seems to hate mobile
screens, Mat's magic <http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle>
seems to be restricted to desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki>
requires so much horizontal scroll that I forget about what was at the left
side when I reach the other side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix
to convince him to provide an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's
graphs, because on his extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put
everything on the sidebar. A couple of alerts is enough to fill the
entire screen <https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>,
popups are used everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search
mechanism on a popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't
see any advantage on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of
*6MB* on their high bandwidth internet connections is not even
noticeable. And those are just some random examples on an entire sea of
issues for mobile users.
I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello JWHoneycutt,

I'm not familiar with the solutions you are mentioning. Would you mind to link them?

Regards

[Jan]

Hi Danielo,
You can find asnoted in the IOS and Google appstore.
It is comfortable for mobile input and could be a model what a mobile
version could look like...
Inspired by the post I just tried to to import one of the numerous XMLs
JWH writes about...unluckily the format is not compatible.

Cheers Jan

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello JWHoneycutt,
I'm not familiar with the solutions you are mentioning. Would you mind to link them?
Regards

[John Newell]

Hi. I admit to being a bit of a newby myself .... I am a unashamed fan of
what has been accomplished by the creators of TW.
I do use my mobile a LOT as I am not deskbound and it is my on-the-fly
comms device, office repository, reference shelf, invoice book and
transaction device.....
Sure there are other options that provide slick mobile interface delivery
that make TW5 on TWedit look sloppy ( sorry guys ) however the ABILITIES of
TW5
are almost limitless for the operability it can provide - by allowing it to
do almost whatever you want it to do ( with some constraints and
annoyances. admittedly )

With TW, I lose nothing. I find required content near-immediately. It
presents crazy diverse magic almost every day for me...


*because it is endlessly useful to those who make it so.*Case in hand. A
client who has engaged me to create an digital book of the "Warburton
Trail" - an iconic bike / horse / walking track that winds its way for
about 40km along the old rail track journey east of Melbourne, past
vineyards, old pubs, bike-cafes, streams and rivers, orchards, small
townships and more. His photography portrays not only the map of how to get
the best out of a variety of ways to take this journey - but provides
imagery of what you will see ( inbound or outbound ) so you get the most
out of it.

A book would struggle with that. What? Read it backwards for the return
journey? No - merely reframe the navigation order and abilities of the
tiddlers.
Add a live map. ( TW can feed imagery, video, embeds of all types easily
and allow for online magic )
Allow for live delivery of invitations of the cyclists, riders and walkers
to join the varying produce, events, ciders, craft beers etc along the way
on a very timely basis and very accessible.

The idea of PRESENTING this to the client was done at the first appointment
with thanks to TWedit on my ipad and iphone - both able to quickly
demonstrate what CAN BE DONE... gig secured with an elated client.

The point is.... find what you want it to do within its opportunities and
limitations.
I marvel at what TW has yet to be used for ......

My suggestion is to practice use of TWedit - -it works - and i am sure not
just for me..... desktop is easier but annoying to carry around
make the adjustments - you may find it worth it.

cheers
John

Post by JWHoneycutt
Hola Danielo -
As a newbie I am liable to write something that makes others roll their
eyes or think "we all know that". Despite that...
TWEdit is for mobile - right? I find it nearly useless
TiddlyNotes - better except it doesn't work either
As Noted - based upon TW engine, better user interface, and tiddlers are
broken out into a ton of little files
I am interested in an a similar application, personally.
JWHoneycutt

Post by Danielo Rodríguez
Hello,
This is both a reflection, a touch of attention and a desperate call to
all the users that feels like me, if there is any.
Three years ago when I first discovered tiddlywiki I found both,
TWClassing and TW5. I decided to go for TW5 because it looked much better
on my mobile, and that gave me a feeling of future-proof software. As
an unreadable bird view of a page that required to zoom and scroll all the
time. So, as I said, despite it's lacks and faults I go for tw 5.0.5
After three years things haven't evolved for mobile users, or at least
not in the good way. The only community that grows is that one that doesn't
care about mobile, which is presumably the same that didn't care about it
on TWClassic before, but now on TW5. The only issues that are discussed and
the new features that are implemented doesn't care about mobile, it doesn't
matter, it is just take for granted, what we have is good enough.
I read this forum mostly from mobile, and when someone makes an
announcement, or posts a link to any new good stuff my first impression is
the one that I have from my phone. If I'm unable to use it comfortably on
mobile I usually close that tab and forget about it.
In a world that is moving to "mobile first, forget about desktop focus on
mobile, mobile rules!" experiences, tiddlywiki community is moving on the
opposite direction. Twitter, Facebook and Github are examples of how doing
things well: If I add their page to my home screen I can't distinguish it
from a native app.
Just to mention some examples, Jed Carty
<http://inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com/> has a wiki that seems to hate mobile
screens, Mat's magic <http://twaddle.tiddlyspot.com/#TWaddle:TWaddle>
seems to be restricted to desktop browsers, Cardo <http://cardo.wiki>
requires so much horizontal scroll that I forget about what was at the left
side when I reach the other side of the wiki. I fought to death with Felix
to convince him to provide an alternative way of displaying Tiddlymap's
graphs, because on his extra-extra wide screen it was just fine to put
everything on the sidebar. A couple of alerts is enough to fill the
entire screen <https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/1743>,
popups are used everywhere like they were a good idea, and the new search
mechanism on a popup is just *a bad joke*. Most of the users here don't
see any advantage on using NoteSelf because syncing an entire file of
*6MB* on their high bandwidth internet connections is not even
noticeable. And those are just some random examples on an entire sea of
issues for mobile users.
I would ask to those tiddlywiki wizards that do not want to care about
mobile to totally disable their creations on mobile, because the lack of a
feature is better than a bad experience using it. Github for example
doesn't have all the features on their mobile version.
Does anybody subscribe to any of the things that I said above? Am I the
only interested on using tiddlywiki on my mobile phone? I want to know this
because it maybe it will be easier to leave tiddlywiki and go with any of
the products that cares about mobile than fighting the entire community.

[Riz]

Since it is related, I might as well ask it here. If you want to go with creating different work flows for mobiles ( say, open a tiddler as modal in desktop while in mobile, add it to the main story river ) how will you achieve possibly without prompting the user to switch between mobile mode and desktop mode?

[Riz]

Since it is related, I might as well ask it here. If you want to go with creating different work flows for mobiles ( say, open a tiddler as modal in desktop while in mobile, add it to the main story river ) how will you achieve possibly without prompting the user to switch between mobile mode and desktop mode?

[Jed Carty]

Despite my ranting about not liking moblie I have been playing with ways to
make my things more mobile friendly. Everything used by TWederation
<http://twederation.tiddlyspot.com/> is pretty mobile friendly for reading
at least. The fetching tiddlers part isn't but that is something I need to
solve for desktops anyway. I worked a bit on updating the interactive
fiction thing last weekend and I will hopefully finish that this weekend
and I am trying to use it to experiment with some options for making
different things in tiddlywiki work on a desktop and on a small screen.

Riz,

There are ways to determine what browser a page is loading in and if it is
a mobile browser you can assume that you are on a phone or tablet. I have
just been using css with different rules for different screen sizes using
the sidebar breakpoint option in the core of tiddlywiki as the minimum
screen size for the desktop mode.