If a filter-type has more than ten items, the filter selection changes from checkboxes, which can be changed very quickly, to a dropdown selection, which is (being polite) extremely slow to change.
Why?
Why not allow allow a project with 100 locations to add 5, or whatever, locations as checkboxes? (I know I can go into the location tab and select there, I’m making a general point. Though those filter icons should be checkboxes too, imo, but I digress.)
Hi Marc,
This was simply about neatness and conserving space. If you are building a filter containing multiple different criteria, it would not be helpful to have one of those criteria to push 3 pages down the screen because there are 100 items to scroll through.
Switching to the dropdown style provides the same functionality in a tighter space. The decision of 10 is a fairly arbitrary decision based on design taste.
Matt
It’s not the same functionality, though.
Serious question: Are the team mainly using Windows? Because the clicky-clicky through menus, and dropdowns is a very Windows-type behaviour, and that might explain my incomprehension about what’s happened to TL3’s design.
Hi Marc,
How is it not the same functionality?
Both options let you select from 0-N items by selecting them from a list. The only difference is whether every item in the list is always shown, or whether the items are inside a dropdown menu to conserve screen space to fit other things on screen.
No, we all use Macs as our primary OS.
Most of my usage of Windows regarding selections is by keyboard shortcuts and the use of “Shift+Arrows” or “CTRL+Shift+Arrows” “Shift+PGUP/DN” etc. or in some few cases the TAB key and the already mentioned function keys in any combination…
so I miss the possibility specially use the “Shift+Arrow” to select things, regardless of what and where…
Hi Matt,
Apologies to resurrect an old thread but I have a related question as I just discovered this peculiar behavior where the UI changes once you have more than ten items in the filter. Because the behavior changed, I genuinely thought something broke when I added my 11th tag. I wonder if it would be possible to make this less jarring to a new user. The filter system is very boutique as it is, to put it mildly. I’m still trying to learn its nuances after a fair bit of use, and it is a struggle.
I wonder if, rather than forcing behavior change with an arbitrary threshold, that you could maybe make it a setting toggle. Like “checkboxes? y/n” or “dropdown list after x items” with x being user configurable.
I’m using “Tags” as my primary filter since it gives me the most flexibility to categorize items. But when I try to use multiple criteria for filtering, it gets very difficult to understand the software’s behavior. The combinations of “Match All”, “Match Any”, and “Match None” behave in extremely unintuitive ways. Is there any way we could be given more direct control over what is and is not filtered out of the view? I often find it very difficult to exclude specific things while simultaneously including other specific things.
Hi @Recon thanks for all your feedback.
Could you provide an example of the criteria you want to enter and the results you’d like to see?
It’ll help us better understand the difficulties you’re encountering so we can try to account for it during future product development.
Hi Rob,
I appreciate the chance to suggest filter features!
First, I think the “Match Any/None/All” system is quite unintuitive and confusing as a primary consideration for the logic. Instead, I would strongly recommend a stacked filter structure where the user can define filters and then layer them in AND/OR relationships.
For example, I might define:
“Events with Tags A, B, or C”
and then have another filter:
“Characters with Tags X and Y”
Then stack both of these filters so that anything which passes either filter is displayed.
In my personal case, I’ve got several immortal characters who were born many thousands of years before the story begins and they are still alive but not relevant to the early saga. They become relevant later. So what ends up happening is I get tons of blue bars that go across the screen for characters who are still living, somewhere out in the universe, but they are irrelevant to the part I’m filtering for. And there are some immortal characters who actually are relevant, so I want their bars to appear. But then I might want to see events relevant to one story while other events that are still in the timeline but meant for a different story can be hidden.
I know that’s really vague, so I’ll provide a concrete example next time I am faced with one. I’ve mostly just been operating with characters hidden entirely and then using a date range filter. It’s not impossible to get the views I’m after, it just takes a fair bit of tinkering. I’m still not sure if I’m even using tags correctly for my use case, so I will keep playing around with it and see what happens.
Hey Rob,
I can better articulate what I’m after in a far more common scenario. Maybe you can help me understand how you recommend filtering in such a way:
Let’s say I want to zoom into a date range and show ALL events in that date range. But I also want to display a select few specific characters on the screen at the same time. Currently there’s no easy way to do this. I end up with displays that look like so:
Now, I could give the characters I’m after a Tag called “Core Character” and filter by that. But then I end up with this:
It filters down the characters I want, but it also filters the events by the same tag, which means all events go away unless I specifically give the event that tag (like in the above example).
I just sometimes need a couple key characters on the screen at the same time as also having ALL the events in the date range displayed. Or simply a different event filter requirement than character filter requirement.
Is this possible?
Have you tried using split view at all?
You can activate split view by clicking the box with the horizontal line in the top corner of the screen.
Click on a split to make it active to switch between views or to set which filters apply to it. You could have one view filtered to show only events, and the other filtered to show only characters/people.
Each split will scroll in unison by default, but you can allow independent movement by clicking the padlock icon at the bottom right of the screen.
Oh wow. That helps quite a lot. I can even set up multiple single-character views and get age to show up as a ruler. Though it would be great if I could tighten the views more closely together.
One thing I would really really appreciate is to get rid of the “Cannot measure time difference across views” error. I use the time measuring feature a lot, so having multiple views and still being able to see the amount of time between things would be super helpful.
Hi Rob,
I’ve been making use of the split view but now I’m encountering some odd behavior with the filters.
I’ve got a view open that shows only a custom item type. It’s working well, except when I try to filter by participant. As soon as I give it a condition to only show the custom items that have a specific participant, now ALL item types show up in this view, not just the type I’m wanting to display.
This makes things really messy because I already have events showing in a different split view so I don’t want events being included in the custom item type view. Is there any way to get it to behave?
Thanks again for your helpful feedback. Split view is another feature we’re planning to improve upon in various ways, but I can’t say exactly what those changes will be, or when they might happen at this stage.
Another useful way to measure ages and time differences is to create a relationship between a person and an event, or between two events. Doing so will allow you to see the person’s age, or the timespan between two related events when an event is selected.
I’m not sure what to suggest here without seeing how you’re filters are being applied. It would be helpful to have a look at your file if you’re comfortable with sharing it (email to support@aeontimeline.com).
Otherwise, if you post a couple of screenshots, we should be able to make some recommendations.
I figured I’d wait for 3.5 to see if this filtering issue was fixed.
Happily… IT IS! This is amazing. I love it.
That’s great, happy to hear the issue is fixed for you 
