It would be helpful to display concurrent timeline bands to compare the chronology of separate event chains -- for instance juxtaposing political history and economic history.

Comments

fm’s picture

fm commented

Perhaps these bands could be hidden and revealed at the visitor's discretion, but the existence and availability of the bands should be administrator configurable.

Arto’s picture

Arto commented
Version: master » 4.7.x-1.x-dev
Assigned: Unassigned » Arto
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

You can get something like this by configuring two (or more) timelines as blocks (in their view settings), and then using some Drupal module which allows you to add blocks inline with content (I don't recall any names outhand, but I believe there are several modules providing functionality like this).

If this functionality is needed within one single timeline block/view, then it would require changes to the SIMILE widget used by the module, and should be submitted as a feature request upstream to the MIT SIMILE project's issue tracker.

fm’s picture

fm commented
Status: Closed (won't fix) » Active

Do you mean the "Views Fusion" module, or something else? Unfortunately, I can't get the "Views Fusion" module to work with the "Timeline" module. Theoretically, if I could get the two modules to work together and I were to set up a single timeline in each of two blocks, these timlines would pan together in tandem -- I think. I will post my support inquiry regarding Views Fusion over in their support area.

In the meantime, it does seem possible to add additional bands given the existing SIMILE widget. In these two examples, the MIT folks appear to have created additional bands:

Religion Timelines
Dinosaurs 2

The "Religion Timelines" page displays an effect similiar to what you've discribed using two blocks, but it appears to work within Timeline's existing framework. These juxtaposed comparison bands are almost exactly what I was asking about, minus the second zoomed-out overview band. Have they just pushed two "blocks" together or have they added bands?

I can see how the multiple zoomed-out overview bands of the "Dinosaur 2" timeline might be useful too. My timeline will grow to cover daily events across 2 centuries, and panning month by month may get tedious. However, comparison bands will be more helpful to me in the near-term than multiple zoomed-out overview bands.

riemann’s picture

riemann commented

I'm looking for implementing exactly the same features as fm:
1. The juxtaposed comparison bands
2. The multiple zoomed-out overview bands

Has there been any progress on implementing these 2 existing SIMILE timeline features into the Drupal module?

moshe weitzman’s picture

moshe weitzman commented
Version: 4.7.x-1.x-dev » master

indeed, simile supports multiple bands. but it isn't clear how one could define each band within a single View. I think the right move is to let a timeline be composed of multiple Views. This should ideally be handled within timeline module, and not expect users to write code for this.

jmiccolis’s picture

jmiccolis commented
Assigned: Arto » jmiccolis

I've begun to add the capability for showing multiple bands in HEAD. The current idea is to use the 'grouping field' functionality which views now has and display each grouping in it's own band. I'll be keeping the discussion here in mind as I flush this out, and post back as it becomes ready to test.

xamanu’s picture

xamanu commented
Assigned: jmiccolis » Unassigned

"group by" functionality is now used for color coding and this makes even more sense to me.

I'm thinking about the feature of combining several views into one timeline. Every view could be displayed on a separate band. This would be way more flexible.

ndm’s picture

ndm commented

Great, very important function.

xamanu’s picture

xamanu commented

There is a patch in #664250: Allow for more than two bands by Steve Dondley that allows you to have three bands in the timeline view.
This might help till there is a more general solution within this module.

pvhee’s picture

pvhee commented

The idea to combine multiple views within one timeline is very interesting. Would it be possible to share your plans for doing so? I could be interested to join in development.

xamanu’s picture

xamanu commented

I was thinking in attaching views in order to get two functionalities:

1. Additional views can be set to show on seperate timeline bands,
2. Additional views results can be displayed within the main timeline bands but highlighted (different background). This could be useful for milestones on a gantt-chart.

Since the data that is going to be send to the timeline libs is prepared before creating the timeline it should be realtively easy to run through other views and enrich the data array with the results from one or more view.

I'm using a github repository for experimental development. Of course you are more than welcome to contact me directly.

pvhee’s picture

pvhee commented

I had a look at the timeline views plugin. I tried to add the extra views (that should be shown as well on the timeline) as attachment views, but unfortunately Views renders them directly within the $view object and it seems you don't have the possibility to prepare data to hand over to the Timeline object.

I also noticed that the Timeline class is deeply bound to a single view, such that independently calling e.g. 3 views and sending data to Timeline isn't possible. Would it make sense to refactor the Timeline class to make it View-independent, and providing support for adding different views (with their data and their display options)? Each view would then go into a separate band as you suggest in (1), or different background (2).

Thanks for the help!

xamanu’s picture

xamanu commented

Within the timeline class the result of the view is getting read in and then prepared (through the timeline_events class). At this place it could be possible to extend the timeline class in order to check for attached views. Actually I think it should stay to one timeline class, because even if you combine views it would still be ONE timeline.

I'm happy that you are working on it. I'm open to commit good work to the module of course.

fm’s picture

fm commented

Has anything come of this effort? I still think 'three or more bands' is a valuable addition.

Also, from #9 above:

There is a patch in #664250: Allow for more than two bands by Steve Dondley that allows you to have three bands in the timeline view.
This might help till there is a more general solution within this module.

fwiw, I have not been able to execute this patch successfully.

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

The timelinemap module looks like it already does this (or something similar), so timeline might incorporate some of its code to accomplish multiple bands (or layers). I don't want to geocode everything on my timeline, so Timelinemap is not a good option. I hope some brilliant coder out there can make this happen!