Timeline Maker

Build the timeline in Edit. Use View to see it finished, or to show it on a projector. View keeps only printing and saving; go back to Edit to open a file, undo, or start a new timeline. Your work saves itself in this browser as you type.

Three kinds of boxes

• Event: a date, a title, and a description. The date can be anything: 1868, c. 1600, 300 BCE, Spring 2024, Chapter 3.
• Section heading: splits the timeline into parts, like Causes and Effects.
• Note: plain text with no date, for an introduction, a conclusion, or instructions.

An event can also have More info: longer details and a vocabulary list. Keep the event itself short, with the date and the most important point; the details and vocabulary appear when someone clicks the event in View.

The page does the formatting, so every timeline looks clean. Events stay in the order you put them. Use ↑ and ↓ to move a box, and + Add below to add a new box in the middle.

Pictures

• Each event can have one picture. Click + Picture, or drag a picture file onto the event, or paste a copied picture while you are typing in the event.
• Write a short description of the picture. Screen readers read it aloud for people who cannot see it.
• Use Picture from to say where the picture came from, such as a website or “my own photo”.
• Pictures are made smaller and saved inside the timeline. This also removes hidden information that phones add to photos, such as where the photo was taken.
• In View, click an event to see it larger, with its picture, details, and vocabulary. Click the picture there to see it as large as the screen allows.

Showing events one at a time

In View, click any event (or Tab to its title and press Enter) to open it in a large box. Use ← Previous and Next →, or the arrow keys, to step through the events like slides. Close it with ×, the Esc key, or a click outside the box. This works in full screen too.

Themes

In View, choose a Theme to change the timeline's colors. The theme is saved with the timeline. Every theme has strong contrast between the text and the background, so it is easy to read on a screen or a projector. The page that you edit on always keeps its own colors.

Handing in homework

• Print / Save as PDF makes a copy for your teacher to read. In the print window, choose Save as PDF as the printer. The printout always runs top to bottom. It is black on white, unless you tick in color to use the theme's colors (good for a PDF, but dark themes use a lot of ink on paper). Tick with details to print each event's details and vocabulary too, for a study handout.
• Save to a file downloads a small timeline file. Anyone can open it later with Open a file and keep working on it.

Group work

1. Make a starter timeline: a title, and perhaps some section headings or events for the groups to build on. Click Save to a file and give the file to every group.
2. Each group opens it with Open a file, puts their group name in Made by, adds their boxes, and clicks Save to a file.
3. Open your starter timeline again, click Add from a file, and choose the groups' files (several at once is fine). Each group's new boxes go where the group put them. If a group changed a box that was already there, you see both versions and choose which to keep.
4. While you edit, each added box says which group added it. In View, tick Show groups to show the group names on the timeline and in printouts too.

A group can send an updated file later: add it the same way. Boxes that are already in the timeline are recognized, so nothing is added twice. Adding never deletes anything, and Undo takes back a whole file at once.

Privacy, and shared computers

Nothing you type leaves this computer. There are no accounts and nothing is sent anywhere. The timeline is kept only in this browser, and in any files you save yourself.

On a shared computer, the next person who opens this page will see your timeline. When you finish, save it to a file, then click New timeline to clear it.

For teachers

Students can hand in a PDF, a timeline file, or both. The file lets you open their timeline and show it to the class, or make comments in it. Opening a file replaces the timeline you have open, so save your own first. (Undo also brings it back.)

For group work, see Group work above: groups each save a file, and Add from a file brings their boxes together on one timeline.

Ideas: the events of a novel in story order, a scientist's life, the steps of a process, a personal history, or a project plan with a section for each week.