Quickstart Guide
Get to know the various ways Aeon Timeline helps you view, edit, and inspect your data
View Selection
There are 7 different views to work with in Aeon Timeline, with each giving you unique way to view and manipulate the data in your project. Each view presents the items in a different way, but the data within them is all interlinked, so editing an item updates it in every view.
The timeline view shows a graphical representation of your events in chronological order. You can get in close to analyze the events of a single day, or zoom out to see how things play out over millions of years.
Events won’t appear in the timeline view if the date fields are empty.
The spreadsheet view is a familiar way of working for most people, making it an efficient way to add, edit and sort information.
Events can be placed in any order in the spreadsheet view. Even without a date attached.
The relationship view presents the key components of your data in a grid format to help you quickly see who did what, where, and who they were with.
Don’t forget to give new events a date if you want them to show up in your timeline.
The subway view helps you see the common threads between participants in your story. The intersecting tracks highlight the associations between people and events.
Activate as many, or as few tracks as you like to visualize the relationships between people and events.
The narrative view lets you experiment with different storytelling sequences by arranging the pieces in any order without affecting the chronology of events in the main timeline.
Activate as many, or as few tracks as you like to visualize the relationships between people and events.
The outline view presents the narrative information in a table format to help you add, edit, and reorder your data more efficiently.
Activate as many, or as few tracks as you like to visualize the relationships between people and events.
The mindmap view helps you to brainstorm new ideas and visualize the relationships between key events, people, and places. Use your existing data and create custom mindmap nodes to tie everything together.
Create as many mindmaps as you like to visualize the various themes in your project.
Item Type Panels
An item can be a task, event, person, team, location, or anything else you need for your project.
The key item types are placed within easy reach in the sidebar for convenient access without the need to switch views or sift through menus.
The item types in each starting template are only there as suggestions, so don’t worry if they’re not a perfect match for your purposes—the name, order, visibility, and appearance of items can all be configured under Data Types in the settings menu to set them up in a way that works best for you.
Customize the name, appearance, and visibility of item types in settings to make them a perfect match for you, and your project.
Adding Items
There are heaps of different ways to add new items to a project, but using either the add item button or double-clicking a free space on the timeline are good ones to get started with.
Two ways to add new items
When adding new items, date-specific ones such as tasks and events will show up in the timeline view, while others that aren't associated with a date, such as people and locations, can be found in the item panels.
If you've added a task or event and can't find it on your timeline, switch to the spreadsheet view and find it there. Then you can give it a date, or drag it to set the order relative to other events. Even if you don't have a date for it yet.
Inspector Panel
Whenever an item is selected, the inspector panel appears so you can view and edit the various types of information.
Use the tabs within the inspector panel to access the data associated with that item.
- Determine when events begin, end, or their duration
- Set a character’s birth and death date
- Specify that an event must come before, or after something else
- Determine any tasks that block, or are blocked by other tasks
- Who participated in an event, who observed it, where it took place
- Associate a task with a person or project
- Tag legal issues associated with an event or fact
- Summarise key information
- Add tags to assist with categorization and recall of information
- Go in depth with custom fields such as status, cost, or goals
- Attach images, files, and documents to any items
- Set an image represent an event on the timeline
- Link to external resources, or to files in your local directory
The properties and relationships in your project may vary between starting templates. Find out how to use Advanced Settings to customize your template.
Timeline Navigation
Navigating and scrolling follows the standard conventions you’ll find in a web browser or app, but moving left and right can be done in a few different ways:
Moving left and right
- 2-finger gesture on a trackpad
- Hold shift + scroll the wheel on a mouse
- Scroll with the thumb wheel if your mouse has one
- Drag the context lens (more on this below)
Timescale zoom
- Use a pinch gesture on a trackpad
- Hold CMD(Mac) or CTRL (Windows) + the scroll wheel on a mouse
- Use the zoom slider in the footer to adjust the time scale between the set limits.
The Context Bar
The Context Bar is a key feature of the Timeline view that provides a high-level overview of all the events in your project. You can use the context bar to see where other events are in relation to what’s in view, and jump or scroll to specific points on the timeline.
The Context Lens provides a visual indication of where the view is focused, as well as controls to adjust the zoom to fine-tune what’s visible on screen.
More Resources
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