Tiddler

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This article is about the wiki software element. For other uses see Tiddler (disambiguation)

A tiddler is an entry in a TiddlyWiki. It is equivalent to a wiki page and uses a simplified markup language similar to that used by Wikipedia. In fact the original source text for this entry was entered in a TiddlyWiki and yielded pretty much the same display. Compared to a Wikipedia page though, there are some interesting differences:

  • When a tiddler is created or edited in an original TiddlyWiki found online, it cannot be saved online. Some, but not all, TiddlyWiki adaptations do allow their tiddlers to be saved online.
  • Selected tiddlers are all displayed on the same page.
  • Anything written in CamelCase is assumed to be a tiddler and is rendered as a link into the TiddlyWiki. If it exists, the link will display as bold. If it does not exist, clicking on the unbolded link will cause TiddlyWiki to create the tiddler and go into edit mode.

When a user wishes to update their TiddlyWiki copy from the originating TiddlyWiki, either to get a bug-fix or new functionality, the standard update procedure never changes tiddlers. This discipline ensures that the user never loses their own TiddlyWiki's content.

There are a number of special tiddlers that control parts of the TiddlyWiki display, like the header, the subheader, the main menu, and the tiddlers that will be displayed when the TiddlyWiki first comes up. Changing the text of these tiddlers allows the author to easily customize how their TiddlyWiki looks without any knowledge of web page understructure. But if the user has a good working knowledge of CSS or JavaScript, there are even special tiddlers that allow the user to override the original CSS code and to insert JavaScript code to further customize functionality (add macros). Because these customizations are enclosed in tiddlers, users do not have to worry about losing them if they ever need to upgrade.

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