I’ve come to find Aeon Timeline 3 essential. I’d love to directly message you to discuss specific wishes for the app.
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Regular, preferably frequent, communication is essential to maintain community involvement and support and attract new customers. I haven’t popped in here for a long while because there didn’t seem to be much going on and I had no direct need.
I’d agree with the suggestion in another post for having a discord server. Especially if one or two community members would take on the moderator role (I’m assuming that team time is already too little, and frequency matters if you want people to keep checking in).
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I really think the team has to give out an official message that isn’t “Hey! We’re working on something!”
My subscription has been expired for months now and I’m not re-subscribing until I see that there will be updates or even regular communication from the team.
An actually roadmap would be great. There are a couple of features that people want. I the feature request page hasn’t changed at all.
I’ve been waiting for avatar images for months and in the feature request it has been voted by a lot and it was labeled with small, yet it still hasn’t been added.
The app feels so dead because of the lack of communication and I’m inclined to think that it is. It’s hard to trust the whole “we’re working on something” when it’s been month and nothing has been shown. Even a sneak peak would be great, because right now it just feels like the team just waited for people’s subscriptions to expire and it’s currently not worth it to subscribe because there is no update.
I’ve been watching my email for months after signing up for the beta and everything but nothing.
This is very disheartening as I’ve been using the app since the beta and really do like it enough to subscribe for updates but without a roadmap or even open communication with the team. It feels like a scam to do so.
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I can understand your frustration. No news is not always good news.
This thread reads, quite rightly I think, as a plea from a concerned user base who loves the app that the developers have crafted. Everyone who has posted here, has done so out of love for Aeon Timeline and its features. They find the app invaluable and want it to be successful. But there will be many more who I am sure will either just be getting on with using the app, happy with what it currently offers (but not necessarily subscribing due to the lack of updates) or they have moved on to other apps with more regular updates being released. This, I fear, may be the silent majority. But that is only guesswork, based solely on my experience of users and apps and their thirst for new features and continued development. After all, continued development is a fairly good indicator of an app’s longevity.
I feel I can add some context here though. And this is in no way a defence of the development team (I can’t speak for them). But I did have an hour long zoom call with one of the devs to discuss my future needs from the app, as offered by @Rebecca above. During that call I got the impression that they are working hard to make the app better in a whole range of different ways. They seemed enthusiastic for the future and eager to understand what my needs were.
However, current development plans were not discussed. In fact, I came away with zero information about what the next update is likely to be, and zero idea whether my wishes for the future were possible areas for development or not (although in fairness, my needs were simple and mainly in line with a number of current feature requests).
We have just passed the second ‘deadline’ or suggested release date for a beta that has been missed and still there has not been a simple blog post talking a little about where the app is headed. Which, for me, is the most frustrating thing. As I get the impression that there will be big changes coming sooner, rather than later. If only I could know that for sure, I would be a much happier user of this wonderful software.
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Let’s remember: Literature and Latte also struggled for many years with Scrivener version 3 for Windows.
Actually, it is a proof of quality for me, if not constantly new updates are needed to be able to use a software. If I only think of the Windows 10 updates, which steal my time again and again.
Or the dreaded message “Your web browser has been updated. Learn all about the brand new user experience.” Yikes!
An excellent job was done by the Aeon developers with Timeline 2, which has served me as a reliable workhorse for many years and has no problems whatsoever. I can program myself tools and not have to worry (anymore) about the file format changing.
Of course, with Aeon 3, things are a bit different – the new features almost challenge you to compare with the market (where Aeon 2 had a unique position), and always create new desires among users. And a subscription model naturally creates great expectations.
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I don’t know about great expectations, but certainly expectations of something continuous. Even if it’s only communication.
By comparison, I received an email from Heptabase a couple of days ago listing all the major features it had launched in April with a list of what it expected to deliver in May. There’s daily communication from their team on their Discord. When I started trialling the whiteboard/note apps, I actually preferred the way Scrintal worked, but it didn’t have dark mode. Was promised for soon, but actually took 4 months. I look at their updates, but don’t use the program and will not continue my subscription.
When there’s a promise, or even an implied promise, it needs to be delivered. Communication helps manage expectations. When 3 was launched with a subscription, it was explicitly in recognition of 2 having stalled and that there was need of a funding mechanism supporting continued development. As it stands, there’s no public evidence of that development despite the existence of the mechanism: maybe the old one-off model was the best fit after all.
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We’re in the final stages of working out the last unreleasable bugs and hoping to have the beta release built this week, with announcements likely going out next week.
The largest change by far and what has taken so long has been rearchitecting the app to support larger timelines. We’ve heard from people who found the app slowing significantly when they had more than a couple of thousand of items. The only way to truly address the performance issue was a very large rewrite of essentially the entire codebase. Coming out of this, we expect the app to be able to handle thousands of items with minimal lag.
Another reason why we have been quiet on exact features is we’ve come to realise that taking on suggestions as they come, while there are always good intentions, hasn’t always left us in the best spot. And that’s on us for not planning and prioritising at a higher level. Again with good intentions, but we’ve sometimes spent our time on additions that don’t help the most people, or on features that don’t yet come together into a coherent experience.
We want to address some difficulties a lot of people have with the app, even if they don’t specifically call it out. Clicking or editing the wrong item due to confusion, not being able to navigate their data, not using various features because they’re too difficult. So we’ve been putting in effort to make the app easier to use, less taxing, and less error prone.
The resulting changes are only just a start, and we wouldn’t expect they solve all those problems. But hopefully it sets us on a better path of making any features we do add more discoverable and learnable, and ultimately more useful.
So as a preview, a few updates that have been made (other than the performance improvements which are less visual):
Showing item icons in the item’s actual colour, rather than items having seperate icons and colours that aren’t used together.
Showing in the workview header how many items are shown in a view, and how many items are hidden by filter.
Making it easier to see which item is selected. Adding an option to auto open and close the inspector.
Making it faster to add entities. Making it easier to tell in Spreadsheet and Relationship what items are being edited.
Showing a warning colour when entering an invalid date that will be rejected.
Showing where an item went if it drops away from your mouse position, such as in Timeline view where items move to be ordered by date.
Even a sneak peak would be great, because right now it just feels like the team just waited for people’s subscriptions to expire and it’s currently not worth it to subscribe because there is no update.
That definitely has not been our intention. The subscription was put in place for updates to recognise that at this stage for the app, not all updates are going to hold value for everyone (although we had certainly hoped to get to the upcoming beta sooner). Having the subscription be for updates only was intended to allow people to optionally hold off until there were changes that they did find valuable.
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Rebecca,
Your message and explanations make sense. Biting the bullet on your deep database code and getting it right, or at least better, has to have a first priority. Failing to do this leads to big user disappointments later.
However, since this is “basic” and since you said this is a very big code rewrite, you must have a large and vigorous beta because you will surely have lots of new bugs to fix. Perhaps when the beta is out you will post a “public” (beta only?) bug list, status, and fix expectations? It seems like lotsa folks want you to be successful so perhaps you enlist their help in one or more ways?
I am a newbie and dabbler but did consumer software in an earlier life.
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Thank you for the update Rebecca. While I tend to not have thousands of lines of data in any single timeline file (I’m never likely to write a novel the size of War And Peace), hopefully the changes to the underlying architecture will make the app feel smoother. And also, perhaps it will help fix the visual glitches I am still experiencing in rendering Timeline views, especially at the margins of timeline ranges.
Another benefit of providing a more streamlined and performant app is that it will make plotting an entire series of books in a single timeline file even more viable.
The other changes you have previewed I am sure will certainly help users navigate around the app and will help build a more solid base upon which to develop any future updates.
From one of @matt’s previous comments regarding the high volume of feature requests (some carried over from version 2 and even earlier) it makes sense for you, as a development team, to review all feature requests. With an eye to prioritising those which are likely to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of users, both current and future. And, as you say, if features developed don’t suit certain users then they do not need to continuously pay for updates they don’t find useful.
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Have you ever thought of offering additional features as program extensions? Of course, this would require a “plug-in” architecture, which may not exist in version 3.
I agree.
I explored joining the beta program since I am a committed AT3 user and fan, and because I have some technical capability. I decided against it because I could not see how I could continue to use the released version on an ongoing writing project and run the beta – I’d have to run my ongoing project on the beta, which is too risky for a couple of reasons: 1) A bug in the beta could corrupt my project and 2) there is no way to be certain that the subsequent release would be compatible with the beta, so that work could be lost.
My understanding is that I cannot simply run the released version and the beta separately, whether on the same machine or two machines. I’d like to know how others plan to run the beta if they also have live projects? What am I missing, because from where I sit, it’s almost as if the beta program is designed to prevent someone like me, deeply into a writing project, from being a beta participant.
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This is what I call truly writer-friendly 
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I have to be honest, I too am deep in a new writing project, right in the midst of the detailed planning of a new book, and I am questioning whether I have the time to participate, and from your comments, whether I am brave enough. Given where I am in the process, if the new version runs as smooth as butter, with minimal risk of data loss, I should be able to switch versions and continue with my work. But, best laid plans and all…
I also have to question whether I have the time to do beta testing justice at this point in my project.
I am guessing though, from @Rebecca’s post, that this beta will not be as time consuming as the alpha and beta for version 3.0, which was a huge commitment and took up a lot of my time.
So very true 
EDIT: Although, @SCN, I’m a sucker for a good beta. So I will probably export my timeline file in its current state into a CSV format and hold that on my system and do backups prior to testing. From the info posted regarding the changes it seems the underlying code has changed but there is no indication that the file format has changed. I may be wrong there and it would be worth some clarification from the devs. Perhaps it will be made more explicit in the announcement due next week how transitioning to 3.2 is likely to affect ongoing timeline files. But my initial thinking is I can offload the beta and switch versions back and import the CSV if I hit a problem with the beta.
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Sounds like a valid approach. I’m tempted, for sure.
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I’m noodling in the Beta now. I’m six years into a writing project but my main timeline backed up fine so I’m excited to explore the changes.
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I’m not in the beta program. Out of curiosity, does the beta include the option for the Subway view to show the data from the Narrative and Outline views rather than just from the Timeline/Spreadsheet views?
Hi Steve, no, there has been no change regarding the ability to view narrative order in subway and relationship views in this beta. It is the one new feature I was really looking forward to. This beta is excellent. The app feels more snappy and it has been tidied up visually in some really useful ways, as well as some annoying bugs having been fixed. But no ‘new’ features from the feature request list have been implemented and this version is clearly going to be a base from which to grow the app. At least, that is the impression I get.
I will also say, following our discussions up thread from here, that the process of converting existing timelines appears to have gone smoothly (I should be careful not to tempt fate). And the beta appears stable and solid. I can understand though if you want to hold off and wait a little. I’m happy to let you know if I run into any issues with stability.
Andrew
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Thanks, Andrew. I appreciate your impressions. I can be patient while things are in beta. I just have my head down, writing. 
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Thank you for the news. I have joined the beta and it’s just in time for my summer break so I am excited to be able to play around the app again.
I do hope there will be a better venue in communicating things to those who subscribed. The updates, even minor, did give hope that it was still actively worked on and it’s a bit worrying when there is radio silence especially when there were things to be done on the app (as shown in the feature request page).
I’m really excited to see the changes and improvements as I can see that the team really put good work into it.
Hi, an occasional user here. Just want to give some feedback regarding your communication, or lack thereof.
I just thought about subscribing, so I checked which version I’m on and opened up your website to see what has been improved since my initial year of support ended late last year. I was rather surprised to find that I’m still rocking the latest release. I could see absolutely no reason to renew, and had I let it auto-renew, I’d be pretty disappointed by now.
Sure, 3.2. would eventually come and satisfy me that the payment was worth it, but that’d happen after half a year of frustration and questioning whether I subscribed to abandonware. It doesn’t matter how you try to justify your silence on the features you’re working on. You can’t afford to leave subscribers in the dark. You gave up your right to radiosilence the moment you started asking for yearly payments.
This isn’t about the timeframes. I need to emphasize that from the outside, your site makes Aeon Timeline look like a dead app. I only found out it isn’t because I was curious enough to dig in the forum, and you know that most people won’t do that. You need to maintain your blog and provide roadmaps. Delays happen and are understandable, but they should be clearly stated. Not buried in a forum thread.
I’m inclined to support you and will proceed to do so, now that I’ve seen Rebecca’s post and know what you’re working on. But you need to understand that the contents of said post don’t belong in the forum. Their place is in the blog.
You have great software, but your terrible communication is letting inferior apps like Plottr capture the market.
You’ve clearly put work into this site. Now use it.
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