First of all, we would like to thank our audience outside our 4-bedroom walls, for taking the time to read this blog. We hope you and your families are staying safe during this COVID-19 outbreak.
In this blog we will be discussing TimelineJS, another digital humanities tool we referred to throughout this semester. We have had the opportunity to use TimelineJs twice this semester, the first time we worked on the platform, it was individual and practice for our Digital humanities project, which we will be working on as a group. For those who are unfamiliar with this platform, TimelineJS is a visual representation tool on the web, similar to a power-point presentation. However, the main aspect of this tool is time. It is most beneficial when you display your content as a story in which every slide represents an event stamped by a date. As you can see in the following picture, it is favorable if every slide includes a start date, end date, and a display date. Nevertheless, the coolest thing about this platform is that regardless whatever story, project, presentation etc. you intend to represent, it allows you to customize it by putting a plain color as a background. Also, in case you want to spice things up, you can always add a photo. If you really want to impress the crowd, you can even embed a live moving giphy in the background. In addition to adding a background, you can add media to put some pictures to words and the options vary from pictures, GoogleMyMaps, to SoundCloud music, and YouTube videos.
How it works:
Creating a TimelineJS is super easy and fun. First, you need to access your Gmail account, go to TimelineKnightlab, click on make a timeline, and access your google drive. At this stage, the site has already shared with you a spreadsheet to access with examples embedded in it. In order to add content, type a headline for your text in the “Headline” column, and add your paragraphs in the “Text” column. As mentioned earlier, to be able to customize your presentation, you will need to embed the image address from online pictures, giphy, videos etc.. To acknowledge their sources, copy-paste the website link you got your sources from into the “Media Credit” Column. In addition, people can share the excel sheet with other people to view and edit depending on whether it’s a group project or if they just need a bit of help. To share, just click the share button and add the person’s Gmail and you’re good to go!
Once done with the project, it is time to release this beauty to the public. You can achieve this final step by pressing file, publish to the web , and copying the link displayed in front of you. The second step is to paste this link into Timelineknightlab “step 3” which will generate a new link in “step 4” and then click on preview. Finally, share the link with your friends for them to view your eye-catching project.
As you guys can see, TimlineJS is a straightforward and user-friendly digital tool. We can successfully say that this tool is the most rewarding of them all. Nonetheless, it is bittersweet, as moving between columns serves as a disadvantage when it comes to writing bigger paragraphs. Big paragraphs will make the spreadsheet less comfortable and more intricate to navigate and edit. In addition, it is known that a font type can set the mood of the text and italicizing a word can distinguish it from the crowd. However, these editing types are not applicable in TimelineJS.
At this point, you would have got a hold of how to navigate and work with TimelineJS. Before being introduced to TimelineJS, our team’s goal was to prepare a simple presentation using PowerPoint, a classic tool utilized by many. This would involve multiple slides with big bulks of writing, which eventually would cause the viewer to lose focus and interest in the topic presented. It has been an essential software throughout the years, but it has shown to be limited in terms of media attachment and flexibility. The aim with PowerPoint was to deliver the information as clear as possible in the simplest of ways in order to maintain the reader’s interest. Thus, we didn’t think beyond the facts and information as to what we can deliver visually.
TimelineJS allowed us to expand our aim into something more creative and visually appealing. It helped us overcome many compatibility and embedding issues we constantly faced with PowerPoint. For example, with TimelineJS, we can embed interactive maps through which the viewer can navigate. In addition, we can also insert videos, tweets, music, and gifs. However, such an option isn’t available on PowerPoint, where we can only insert pictures, links, and text. Maps would show as images that offer no interactive value whatsoever. The various types of multimedia that can be used in TimelineJS allow a better understanding of the topic being presented and attracts more interest. For example, by using a short video to replace long and dull bulks of text, we can deliver the same information needed in a more appealing way. Moreover, TimelineJS is easier to work with, especially when working with other people on the same presentation. It allows multiple users to work together by sharing it and editing it simultaneously. Therefore, this tool gave us the opportunity to switch gears and research from a different angle, which aims to deliver something amusing. It’s not about stating the important events and facts only, but rather sequencing these events in a visual and interactive timeline.
We definitely believe that TimelineJS will allow us to expand our scope immensely. Indeed, not only does TimelineJS have a section for adding media, but also one for the background of a slide. Thus, we decided to include media pictures on almost every slide of our project. For part 1 of our project, we included pictures related to money to accompany our abstract. For part 2, we included pictures of each of our three authors along with pictures of the mapping of each author’s life achievements. In part 3 we were able to do the same as we added pictures of our analysis of each novel through CLiC, Voyant, and GoogleMyMaps. Lastly, part 4 was also illustrated by a picture related to digital tools. Thus, TimelineJS gave us the opportunity to assemble a wide array of media from different sources into one platform. Other than the multimedia compatibility of TimelineJS, the basic structure of TimelineJS was considerably helpful in our project. In fact, TimelineJS is organized into slides. This allowed us to compartmentalize our ideas. Hence, as mentioned previously, we were able to split our project into four different parts and the slides helped by indicating when one part ended and the other started. Another essential feature of TimelineJS is the possibility of naming each slide so the reader can get an idea of the subject of each slide. We have concluded that these properties of TimelineJS were enough for us to establish our project along with its research questions and the answers to them.
PS: Follow this link to check our TimelineJS DH project on Money&Power through the lense of three authors:
MAHA'S WORLD 