Better visibility for titles of long-duration events in the timeline view

Feature Requests
#1

The Problem:

Currently, the title of an event is shown at the start date of the event in the timeline.

The problem with this is that for events with long durations, you could easily scroll past the titles, which then just leaves you with lines that don’t show any information.

Take the screenshot below as an example, there are 3 lines that just have no visible information, and so they provide no value to the user until they zoom out or scroll to the left to find the start of those 3 events to see the titles.

CS_Aeon Timeline_2025-04-04_12.43.34PM
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Proposed Solution:

As the user scrolls to the right on the timeline, the leftmost edge of the timeline view should act as a kind of wall or stopper for the titles of visible events, where the titles will never move beyond the edge until the event scrolls past the left edge.

This is a very common usability feature in video editing programs, like Final Cut Pro. Below is a gif from the Final Cut Pro timeline showing exactly what I described:

CS_Final Cut Pro_2025-04-04_12.36.41PM

You can see that clip names are always visible in the timeline until the clips are gone from the timeline.

Why This Is Worth Implementing

Being able to see what long events are happening concurrently with shorter events is often important for context.

For example, if a user is mapping out world events of the last decade, it would be useful to see all the events that happened while COVID was happening.

2 Likes
#2

I like your idea. In the meantime, if I forget which timeline is which, I will continue to just hover over the one in question, which brings up a tooltip with the name. Also, in my case, I use an ultrawide monitor for composing music, which comes in handy when using AT because it tends to mitigate this problem as it’s rare that the timeline will exceed the monitor width.

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#3

At least in the Mac app, the tooltip only comes up after 2 seconds. It’s a workaround but it’s not the best, especially if you have multiple long events running through the timeline concurrently.

Depending on what you use AT for, I don’t think ultrawide monitors are the solution.

I have events that last 10+ years, and some that last only 2 weeks. If I zoom in enough to see the months, I don’t think there are any monitors in the world that would be wide enough to keep the start date of a 10-year-long event on the screen.

Great studio you got there, by the way!

1 Like
#4

Good points. And thanks.

#5

Just one more thought. In the upcoming vers. 3.5, we can create multiple timeline-view tabs with any zoom levels and positioning we want. I wonder if having such tabs showing next to each other (vertically or horizontally positioned) with one zoomed in and the other zoomed out would give you a helpful visual reference. (Still, your idea is the best solution, to be sure.)

#6

@jameszhan , I wanted to circle back on this because I just remembered that @Rebecca mentioned (in the Beta group) this planned feature for the upcoming Vers. 3.5:

Item cards for lengthy items in timeline view will stick within the screen as you scroll.

This sounds suspiciously like what you are after.

#7

No way! This sounds exactly like what I was describing. Excited to find out if it is! Thanks for bringing this to my attention :slight_smile:

1 Like
#8

Yeah? Cool. Are you in the Beta group, by any chance?

#9

I am not, but that’s okay! I don’t mind waiting for the feature to come out in an official release.

1 Like