How could I present a timeline?

Q & A
#1

Hi, I have a timeline for a history period from 1815 until 1850, many entries, some years with many entries, many years with no entry. I work on Windows with https://www.timelinemaker.com, a really perfect timeline maker, but not for Mac. How could I present my timeline on web or in a presentations? Is it possible to delete spaces between years without entries? A timeline vom 1815 until 1850 ist not good for pdf/print - but which format could I use? (html is not supported by Aeon)

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#2

You’re not the only person desperately waiting for any sign that the Aeon team seriously intends to re-instate the export-to-web functionality.

Implicitly, the answer from Team Aeon appears to be “never.” Good luck to us all, I guess.

#3

I just had a glance at TimelineMaker. Very nice. However, it looks like a mere visualization tool to me. In the video, it looks like you enter the data in a table, and then the program draws various graphs, kind of like the charts with Excel.
Can you place or move events directly on the timeline? Indeed, this would be difficult if the timeline is shortened where there are no events yet.

Getting back to your question about presentation: I guess it’s imagined that viewers have to install Aeon 3 in the free view-only mode in order to view a distributed timeline. In a working group you could think of such a thing, but for a publication on the web it is probably out of the question.
Is there anything against continue using Aeon Timeline 2? Me, for example, I do.

#4

Short answer is; YOU CAN’T!

If you do know your way around vector graphic, it is possible to export to PDF, import/open the PDF in e.g., Inkscape (free open source), the exported pdf is a vector file, then save/convert the file to SVG in Inkscape, and create a dynamic SVG for web in Inkscape…

This is a lot of work, but possible.

A few problems:

  1. it is near impossible to export a large timeline to PDF, you need to try multiple times to get the right zoom level in Aeon before export because of the artificial dimension limit in the PDF version that AEON use

  2. The vector graphic in the PDF is built up of thousands of vectors, so it is an insane number of vectors to work with in e.g., Inkscape.

And a few more I don’t remember at the moment… it’s a long time since I tried to do this…

#5

Yes currently it is designed to have people install the free read-only version of Aeon Timeline to view a distributed timeline, however we understand for web publication this is not useful.

Instead we are working on making Aeon Timeline available online for this purpose, with beta testing for this expected to be opened up later this year.

Unfortunately we won’t be bringing back the HTML style export that existed in version 2. While we did consider adding this back while working on the online version, it became infeasible with the size of the app and amount of source code being exported.

#6

If I knew this last year, I would never have bought version 3.

Specially since you still have not solved the artificial dimension limit on pdf and image export.

As a minimum you should support export to SVG, so that people can make their own dynamic SVG for WEB in e.g., Inkscape or other vector-based image software.

I think the path you take now is the death of Aeon 3, going away from a web export (html, js).
It is not good when developers of a potential good software get bitten by the “cloud app bug”. in 99% of the time, it ruins the software.

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