Tinderbox

The program seems to have a small user base, and, judging from comments by users on the various fora (see below), a handful of them seem to have trouble figuring out how to use and what to do with it. I believe this is because one is actually required to think, sometimes rather hard, to make effective use of Tinderbox. I slipped right in to productive use of the program right away, but I think this is because I had been thinking about how I might use something like Tinderbox before I discovered that it existed. It is also rather difficult to evaluate the program, as the free demo version is severely limited, but if, like so many people, you have hundreds or thousands of scraps of information on your hard drive, and you have been looking for a way to keep them and their relationships to each other organized in a way that is more flexible and visually suggestive than a traditional database, you must give it a try. This is doubly true of you need to export part of your information morass as a website or something else, because Tinderbox is quite flexible in this regard.

Tinderbox Resources

Home Base

If you want to participate in an uncensored discussion of Tinderbox, you should join the mailinglist.

A little kludge for using External Editors with Tinderbox.

Web log: News about Tinderbox, with links to other people who have interesting things to say about it.

Tinderbox Public File Exchange: Tinderbox example files contributed by users.

Wiki

Mark Bernstein: Personal site of the creator of Tinderbox.

Tinderbox Shell Tools: These tools "allow a shell programmer to manufacture a new file of notes for [...] TinderBox [...], or to modify an existing file".

Development Peekhole

Tinderbox Reference File

TinderToolBox: Marc-Antoine Parent's utilities for transforming Tinderbox files.

Tinderbox Tutorial: Attributes, Agents, and Actions

Tinderbox Links

Tidbits Review

Outboard Brains: A thoughtful and eloquent essay on the uses and meaning of Tinderbox.

Brief MacWorld Review

surf trail: Made with Tinderbox, and sometimes talks about it.

Deep Tinderbox

A glowing review with a special feature.

protoTyping: Discusses the nitty-gritty of using Tinderbox for various purposes (such as creating the site).

Doing Something Different: This "hypertext narrative of a life" has a Tinderbox section.

sunsetandlabrea: Assorted notes and occasional comments on the tools used to make the site, which sometimes includes Tinderbox.

Vlad Spears: "Chief Iconoclast - Daevlmakr Media"

Nathan Matias Review

Scott Price: essential programming skills: An insightful posting to the Tinderbox mailinglist that outlines the programming concepts and practices you probably need to get the most out of Tinderbox.

Angela Booth compares Tinderbox with an old program called Lotus Agenda.