TiddlyWiki – the easy to use Wiki that works in your browser!
What is TiddlyWiki?
TiddlyWiki is an open source project created by Jeremy Ruston
TiddlyWiki has been around since 2004 so it's a very mature system that has now had many extensions written for it.
I created a TiddlyWiki many years ago (2005!) all about Prince2 – the Government backed project management framework. I was learning all about Prince2 at the time and studying for the 'Practitioner' qualification. The TiddlyWiki approach to making notes and linking notes/thoughts via the Wiki syntax was brilliant and made a very popular system.
The Wiki is self contained, which means that you can download the whole TiddlyWiki in its entirety as one html file and browse it completely offline.
What can you do with TiddlyWiki?
It would perhaps be easier to define what you cannot do with TiddlyWiki! It's a hyperlink notepad essentially that can be extended into a full blown website and enhanced and simply copied to enable others to benefit.
There are many features of TiddlyWiki that make it a wonderful and easy platform. It works with Javascript and html natively, but neither of those get in the way of you being able to create notes and ideas; quickly and easily
Is it worth looking at and spending time understanding?
I would say YES with a resounding YES. Jeremy has devoted a large part of the last 10 years on this project and it's not very a very mature and tremendously useful system.
Use it for notes, publishing, book writing, brain storming, whatever! It's great :)