Are there plans to improve the organization of the L5 timeline?

The timeline in L5 has a lot of potential to be a really helpful tool.

As it stands now, however, it is a bit too random to be very useful.

Events need to be organized in a way that it is easy to make sense of what is going on at first glance.

The timelines that were available in L4 were a good bit more useful for understanding a historical period than the new timeline.

Are there plans to improve the organization of the L5 timeline?
Or is the current layout meet the spec for what this feature was envisioned to be?

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Comments

Mark Smith

Can't tell you about Logos' plans, but have some questions if you don't mind:

As it stands now, however, it is a bit too random to be very useful.

By random, do you mean there are too many lines showing at one time? If not what?

Events need to be organized in a way that it is easy to make sense of what is going on at first glance.

Of course they are organized by time. What would help otherwise?

The timelines that were available in L4 were a good bit more useful for understanding a historical period than the new timeline.

Could you elaborate? Was it because of the way they were displayed or that they only covered one aspect of history? How?

Russ Quinn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/418138#Comment_418138

By random, do you mean there are too many lines showing at one time? If not what?

Not so much too many lines.
I think the biggest problem is that the events are arranged a bit haphazardly.
A good timeline uses both vertical and horizontal arrangement to give the eye a way to track the relationship between events.
It is possible to have a lot of events on a lot of lines but to arrange them in such a way that is easy to read the timeline.

Of course they are organized by time. What would help otherwise?

Organization by subject in any given time period. For instance, keep events related to Egypt together, events related to Israel together, events related to Greece, Rome, etc. That is a pretty common convention with most timelines.

Could you elaborate? Was it because of the way they were displayed or that they only covered one aspect of history? How?

The timelines in L4 used vertical spacing more effectively.

I see a lot of potential in the way L5 links events to resources but they need to follow more established timeline conventions for organization.

Todd Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/418177#Comment_418177

By random, do you mean there are too many lines showing at one time? If not what?

Not so much too many lines.
I think the biggest problem is that the events are arranged a bit haphazardly.
A good timeline uses both vertical and horizontal arrangement to give the eye a way to track the relationship between events.
It is possible to have a lot of events on a lot of lines but to arrange them in such a way that is easy to read the timeline.

Of course they are organized by time. What would help otherwise?

Organization by subject in any given time period. For instance, keep events related to Egypt together, events related to Israel together, events related to Greece, Rome, etc. That is a pretty common convention with most timelines.

Could you elaborate? Was it because of the way they were displayed or that they only covered one aspect of history? How?

The timelines in L4 used vertical spacing more effectively.

I see a lot of potential in the way L5 links events to resources but they need to follow more established timeline conventions for organization.

Russ, I agree with your assessment. It has it usefulness, but it needs really needs to be grouped by subject or country.

Bob Pritchett

Right now there is a prioritization of events; I believe it is related to the number of references to the event in our library.

As we tag more resources, this will get smarter. We're also planning to introduce event grouping at different zoom levels. So if someone has ten events associated with them, but you are zoomed out to where their lifespan is only a quarter of the display, we could collapse all ten events into "Life of Person", possibly with the option of double-clicking to expand an event group into individual events.

We're also working to use color for meaning, and make other improvements. Your suggestions are welcome!