Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
timelines
creating/editing
opening a timeline
publishing/embedding
events
users
managing users
data
Welcome! We're still filling out this guide. In the weeks to come, we'll add
more details related to Plus features like collaboration, managing users,
and importing and exporting data. You can alwayswrite to us if you have
questions, and we'll get back to you as soon we can.
creating a timeline
To display the timelines panel, if it's not visible, click on "timelines" in the
application header.
timeline description
This is helpful for when a visitor lands on your published timeline and
needs an introduction, guidance, credits, or other information. The
description can contain basic html tags: img, a, strong and em.
focus date
The values of the zoom level and focus date are mere guesses at first! As you fill out
the events in your timeline, it will become more and more clear how these ought to
be set. See also the snapshot feature for setting timeline values.
When a timeline is loaded, it needs some date at which to start. This is the
"starting point" of the timeline, as the user can in most cases drag or
zoom the timeline away from it. Sometimes the focus date is best set as
the middle of the information, but in other situations, the beginning of a
narrative series of events is more appropriate. By clicking the calendar
icon by the date field, you can use our date picker (shown above) to select
a date using a calendar view.
zoom level
As
with the focus date, a timeline needs a scope or zoom-level at which to
begin. Any visitor might decide to immediately zoom in or out, but you
ought to choose this value carefully before publishing your timeline to
make sure the initial view is optimal.
size-importance
Timegli
der's special sauce which makes it possible to look at large amounts of
data in a zooming timeline is the size-importance feature. With this box
checked, an importance value given to events also determines their
relative size as you zoom in and out, making them larger and smaller
respectively. This check-box turns this feature on or off. (It can be handy
to turn size-importance off to make sure you see all events, as less
important events can fade from view as one zooms out.)
opening a timeline
Click the title of the timeline in the timeline panel, then the
"open timeline" option to show the timeline on the stage.
(If the timeline has no events in it you won't see much, but
you'll be prompted to create your first event.)
The timeline panel (clicking on a timeline title) is the hub for accessing
other features for a timeline: getting to the list view, creating a legend,
taking asnapshot, and publishing/sharing options.
opening a timeline
To get the public url of the timeline, you first need to click the
"public url" checkbox in the main timeline properties and click
"save". Then click on the timeline title again from the timeline menu
panel, and select "publish/share". This will open the tab in the properties
panel that has the main URL, and an embed code for placing the timeline
in an iframe into blogs or other web pages.
sharing panel
timeline presentations
Guide under construction: Contact us if you need help with this.
creating/editing an event
With a timeline open (its title highlighted in the timelines
menu panel), the simplest way to create a new event is
to double-click on the stage at or near the date of the
event.
event title
Event titles should be as short as possible. This allows for more space in
the timeline for other events. A title like "Camembert introduced in
Normandy in 1791" could likely be shortened to just "Camembert"
dates are shown in the timeline rule itself, and details like "in Normandy"
can be reserved for the description.
event icon
T
o the left of the event title field, there is an icon. You can click on this to
bring up the icon menu. Icons allow you to differentiate different sorts of
events: good things, bad things, inventions, locations, and so forth.
Timeglider Plus users can create a legend so that a timeline can
be filtered to show sets of specific icons.
Every event
on a timeline needs a precise date and time even if you will not be
displaying all that information to viewers. The start date of an event will
create the position at which the event appears on the timeline, the left
side of the title aligning with that date.
Click on the calendar icon to bring up the date picker. This provides a
quick way to click on the month and day, and to advance the year, or
simply type the year into the year field, and then click "OK" to have this
date entered into the date field.
bce/bc dates
date display
First, here's
how size-importance works: At any zoom level, matching an event's
importance value to the zoom level value (visible at the bottom of the
zoom slider) will mean the event will have a "normal" font size at that
zoom level. If you're at zoom level 35 (about 3 years of scope), and you
create an event with an importance value of 35, the font will have a size
of 12 pixels. Zooming out to level 40 (seeing 10 years across the screen),
will mean that the size of the event is about 87% smaller (35/40).
Conversely, zooming in to zoom level 30 will mean that the event appears
larger, to a ratio of 35/30. Going back to zoom level 35, if you gave that
event an importance value of 70, it will appear at twice the "normal" font
size, and be 24 pixels.
"emily", and your screenname is "martha", she will log in with "marthaemily" and the password you provide.
exporting
To export data, click on the timeline title in the timeline menu, choose
"edit properties", and then click on the "import/export" tab. You will see
"CSV" and "JSON" links, each of which will open a new tab with the
plaintext data (or a download prompt on IE). The CSV data includes some
"header" information about the timeline itself; the only useful CSV data is
the events data. be sure to look at the plaintext file before importing it
into Excel or another spreadsheet.
Timeglider Plus users can also import data from CSV files that are
structured identically to the exported CSV files. There is a detailed
explanation of this structure here. To export, follow the instructions above
to the "import/export" tab, and then click on the "import data" link. This
opens a new tab/page in the browser to allow for enough space to see a
preview of data before actually importing it. This preview will indicate any
problems you might have with the data especially with dates.
printing timelines
Timeglider does not have a native printing feature. The best way to get a
good printout of a timeline is to create and print a screenshot. What we
recommend is:
1. Open the browser window as large as
possible to get the widest view of the
timeline.
2. Set the focus and zoom of the
timeline as desired
3. Use a screen-capture utility to take a
screenshot of the entire screen, or a
selection rectangle.
4. If your screenshot extended beyond
the timeline itself, you would need to
crop the image in a basic image
editing program (Preview on Mac,
Photoscape on Windows, or
Photoshop).
5. Print the image from the photoediting application.
6. If you need help creating a JPEG of
your timeline, send a public timeline
URL to info@timeglider.com (along
with the proper date range), and
we'll send you back a file for printing.