Timeline 3D: Let Your Timelines Enter the Third Dimension

Back in December we mentioned an application called Timeline, from Bee Documents. Timeline is an application that allows you to create (you guessed it) timelines. The version of Timeline mentioned back in December was the 2D version, and today I would like to take a look at the 3D version.

At WWDC this past June, Timeline 3D was awarded runner up in “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application at the Apple Design Awards ceremony. This should give you an idea of the quality of Timeline 3D. It is very similar to the 2D version, except for a few key differences (one of which I'm sure you have picked out).

When you first open up Timeline, it asks you to pick the “look for your project. There are 7 pre-designed templates available for you to choose from, which you can edit to your hearts content. Below the template chooser is a list of applications that you can import events from. You can import from iCal, Address Book, iPhoto, RSS Feeds and more. For example, I chose to import events from System Profiler, which gave me a timeline of all the updates I have installed since I bought my MacBook Pro back in February. You can also import from a few applications that don't come pre-installed on your computer, like Aperture and Skitch.

Once you have chosen your theme, and then whether or not you will be using a blank timeline, or import events, it is time to start editing. Timeline has a three-tabbed sidebar on the right, and a toolbar at the top. All of this applications functionality is contained within those two parts of the interface.

The first tab is labled “Visual Design, and is where you can tweak the look of your timeline. From here, you can change the font used in your timeline, the color scheme, what the date line title looks like, and whether or not the selected event has a descender (the line connecting the event to the timeline).

The next tab, labeled “Dates, lets you adjust the formatting of the dates on your timeline. You have quite a bit of control of how they are displayed, with multiple formating options, as well as the option to manually set the row date format (the dates that run along the bottom of your timeline), or have Timeline 3D adjust their formatting automatically.

The last tab of the Settings sidebar is labeled “Printing, and lets you set up your options for when you want to print your timeline. You can set up the page size, document margins, and the minimum amount of pages you would like Timeline 3D to try and fit your timeline on (the default is 1).

The toolbar is where you begin adding/removing your events. After clicking the “Add button to add an event to your timeline, you have to enter in some information about it. Of course you have the necessary information that is needed like the name of the event, and the date it started on, but you can also add an end date, notes, an image and a link associated with the event. Clicking an event after you have finished filling out its information, will let you remove it, edit it, and change the font.

Timeline 3D has 3 main views. First, there is the Screen View. Screen View lets you scroll through your timeline, and add/remove events on the fly. Next there is Bulk Edit, which shows you a list of all your events. This makes it easy to add additional information to many events at once, like notes, images etc. Finally, you have Preview view, which breaks up the timeline so you can see how it will look when printed out.

Next, is the feature that gives Timeline 3D its name. Clicking on 3D in the toolbar will show your timeline full screen. You can use the arrow keys to cycle through your events, and pressing space-bar will invoke all of Timeline's 3D good-ness. From the 3D view you can cycle through your timeline just like in the 2D view. For an explanation for the idea behind why 3D is so great for presenting a timeline, check out this video from the developer, Adam Behringer. You can see a quick example of what the 3D view looks like below.

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Timeline lets you search your timeline from the toolbar, by highlighting the event that matches your search query. Timeline also has a media browser for you to choose photos from your Mac to be included in your project.

Besides the 3D presenting view, all of the features I have mentioned so far are available in both the 2D and 3D edition of Timeline. The other feature that is 3D edition only is Timeline's exporting options. In the 3D edition, you can export to your iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, 1080P HD and even Keynote (with a separate slide for each event). The 2D edition lets you export to PDF as well as send your timeline in an email.

In the end, I can certainly see why Timeline 3D was runner up for “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application.” It allows you to create/customize timelines that are interactive, sleek and well-organized; simple, yet powerful. There are a few videos of Timeline in action on Bee Documents website, so you can see a few examples of what it is capable of.

Timeline 3D from Bee Documents is $65, while the standard (2D) edition is $40. There is a free trial available which lets you do everything except for print/export your timelines.

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