wiki on a stick is an AWESOME implentation of wiki! I have been looking for an easy way to create and maintain simple FAQ and HELP pages for my direct reports at work. most people use an archaic system of crappy word .DOCS that look terrible, print terrible, and are horendous to create. I had resigned myself to writing straight HTML and using my less than steller style to put it all together.
I started reading up on wiki. I found out about wiki from wikipiedia.org, an online user generated repository of information. afterall, if you can't find what you want in google, its probably in wikipedia. as I looked around, I found complex database driven wiki's, and thats not what i'm interested in. I want something simple, easy, and fast.
This implementation lives in a single HTML file. the base file is around 50kb. no servers to install and maintain, and nothing to setup. just start clicking and creating. Thanks WIKI on a STICK!!
*note, a similar program,
tiddlywiki may be more feature rich, but seems bloated to me.
7 comments:
i'm still playing with tiddlywiki - it's such a different way of thinking. it's very cool
how long have you been playing with tiddlywiki? and why didn't you mention something about it.
i played with tiddlywiki a bit yesterday and the pages don't seem static enough. its like it dynamically flings you around your content and though it may look 'pretty' it seems way to squishy for me. I like to know where stuff is. too many dynamically generated buttons on that one.
if I can get a simple search in wiki on a stick it will do everything I want to do and do it nicely, elegantly and without the new fangled bloat.
I was really just playing with it two days ago. it does feel pretty squishy, stuff is tagged, and i didn't find where it was directly addressable. maybe it is, i've not found it yet.
in WoaS, you can directly access a child page through a link to the file.
example:
stickwiki-0.04.html?k2h
this opens the page inside WoaS named k2h.
on a side note, I"ve had some trouble editing the CSS with IE 6, but main pages will edit with IE. so I use firefox to edit the CSS. I'd just ditch IE altogether, but its the primary browser at work, so I have to design for it.
ie7 should have really just adopted the Gecko browser (Mozilla/5.0) instead of re-inventing the broken wheel. it'd be better for all of us.
my programming skills are terrible. I can barely operate a text editor.
but...... after three days of screwing around I got my CSS edited so the page renders correctly on the screen in IE, and in firefox WITH multiple monitor resolutions. you know how it looks great at 1280x1024, but you can't see anything on the (lame standard) 1024x768.
thats not all, I got the print settings setup to look good when the content is PRINTED from both IE and FF.
i'm so happy with myself. no one is ever going to appreciate the work i've put into the stupid help pages.
ok.. the final word on the wiki is that he concept is WAY COOL, but too sophisiticated for the next person after me to maintain. (and no, i didn't take a poll, or here anyone complaining, I'm just being realistic)
so............ new idea for help files is openoffice (keep the odt file and publish PDF) in the short term it will be faster to make each help file, and in the long term i won't have to worry about browser compatibility.
now.. I switch my free time to working on a decent help doc style and try to hack a template.
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