There are a lot of votes for a timeline view on the roadmap:
My question is: what do people envision when they think about a timeline view?
I’m actually a little confused by this one as you present events/facts in a time line view now…
Having said that, I really like the time line view as implemented on FamilySearch with the map next to it.
I know it usually only applies to more recent generations, but it would be nice to have a time line view where photos were displayed as part of the time line in some manner as well. Maybe some knobs so you could choose all photos and documents, or photos only and not documents, or only documents.
For photos people associated dates with, that should be easy to do. It would be nice to be able to let people manually place photos without specific dates in particular places or spots in the time line as well though. Think of it as a blend of a photo album with the time line to tell the story of someones life. Maybe work the stories into the time line as well.
It would also be nice to be able to associate photos with places, and then when those places are referenced in a time line you could display the photo as well. Think of a photo of a church where multiple generations of a family were baptized and married. You don’t want to associate a picture of that church with 40 or 50 people and different dates necessarily just to see it on all those time lines, it should be associated with the location they all have in common.
In line with my comments above, I think I mentioned some time ago it might make sense to try to present two views of the data. One the traditional research focused view all genealogy programs and sites implement, and the other geared more toward family who want to explore the family history that you put together but who don’t care about the research behind it. A streamlined view without the research logs, notes, hints & todos, multiple conflicting facts, and such might would be better for them.
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Wow - I’m a FamilySearch user and didn’t notice the Timeline link until now. So we have two candidate timeline approaches:
- FamilySearch, which I agree is very nice, especially with the map,
- Twile - which uses a format that’s more common outside of family history, and no map: https://twile.com/timeline/inventions
Can I get people’s thoughts here?
Also, I like your last suggestion. I captured it here on the roadmap: Trello For others interested in this, please vote it up.
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Cool! I hadn’t seen Twile before, that looks very slick! I need to play with it, but at a glance something like that looks like it would be great for a non-research oriented view for family members who want to browse through the history and photos. For events like births and marriages and stuff the ability to click on someone’s name and jump into the relevant portion of that persons timeline would be nice.
For a research oriented view something like FamilySearch with the map, but maybe in such a way that the timeline half of the screen is Twile style in vertical instead of horizontal format and with the relevant documents instead of photos. Click a document and pop up a modal with controls to zoom and navigate around the image and do other things perhaps. Perhaps provide the ability to insert notes at certain points in the timeline.
Maybe provide the ability to collapse/hide the documents or collapse/hide the map via some toggles. Those of us with large displays would appreciate seeing it all together but it might be too much for smaller displays.
For the map in the research view you could also go a step further maybe. As far as I know most programs with a map view just display the locations for events for the relevant person on the map. It would be nice to also be able to “layer on” locations for events associated with that persons parents, their siblings, their aunts and uncles, their spouse, their spouses parents, their spouses siblings, their spouses aunts and uncles, and of course their offspring using color coded pins.
Anyway, just some thoughts that come to mind.
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