9 ms·
Show HN: Life – A timeline of important events in (your) life
- bearwithclaws 13y agoWow. This is totally cool! I like how simple your implementation is. I can see this is not only useful as timeline of important life events, but also in recording company milestones. Congrates, man!
- cheeaun 13y agoThanks :) Haven't really thought of company milestones... but I guess you're right!
- bearwithclaws 13y agoMy favorite part of your description: How about Facebook timeline? Meh.
- toddmorey 13y agoMy quick web search didn't show anything without caveats, but if there's any decent javascript that can be used to make the mouse wheel scroll the page sideways, that would be a really nice addition.
- cheeaun 13y agoI thought of that too, probably using some 'mousewheel' event, but later I realise the page height may grow as well (with vertical scrollbar) depending on the number of events.
- markdown 13y agoI'm curious about why you chose the horizontal plane in the first place, given that the web defaults to vertical.
- crazysaem 13y agoMaybe a hybrid approach could work? Automatically scroll down and to the right simultaneously. If I understood it correctly, the events in the timeline will go diagonally down. So if the scrolling happens intelligently by following the events, that should work, shouldn’t it?
- seiji 13y agoA mouse? That's one of those archaic precursors to multitouch trackpads, right?
- oneweekwonder 13y agoPeople might not enjoy your 'joke', but you do have a very good point. When I looked at it the first time, the mouse problem didn't came up. I used my two fingers and like in the authors mind I just swiped to the left and the timeline moved as expected. After reading the comments, and seeing the 'mouse problem' I could see it in my minds eye how it 'breaks'. But seeing your comment I realised the web site only breaks for 'older' input devices. I believe the website would work just as nicely on any multi touch cellphone, and it would make sense to scroll from left to right.
- mildtrepidation 13y agoI wouldn't call it a very good point. I'd call it, based in no small part on your response, a bias towards people who use MacBooks. It's unfortunate to see this attitude towards the very large segment of the internet-using population that are using "older" input devices (which are still much more practical for many use cases).
- seiji 13y agoa bias towards people who use MacBooks. and iPhones and iPads and android phones and kindle tablets and .... Web traffic for some (most?) sites is already tipping over the half-mobile-usage direction (where "mobile" means "doesn't have a built in full-sized keyboard").
- mimiflynn 13y agoExactly, its not just MacBooks. I used a Lenovo recently that has multitouch and scrolls wonderfully with two fingers. At work, I use a multitouch trackpad instead of a mouse.
- saraid216 13y ago
- alvarop 13y agoI just press shift + scroll wheel for horizontal scrolling
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoJust fixed this now by altering "general.autoScroll" in Firefox's about:config [on Kubuntu 13.04] to "true" [double-click it to toggle]. Now middle-drag works (press and hold down mousewheel, drag for direction of scroll).
- sdqali 13y agoThis site has implemented this. http://vitaminsdesign.com/projects/lego-calendar/ http://vitaminsdesign.com/projects/lego-calendar/ Their JS in not minified, you may want to take a look.
- jonemo 13y agoI did something like that on my personal site, eg. http://jonasneubert.com/projects/printablegeography http://jonasneubert.com/projects/printablegeography To accommodate for small screens/windows it scrolls down until it hits the bottom and then goes right. On the way back it scrolls up first, until it reaches the top, then towards the left.
- msutherl 13y agoIncidentally the new Myspace does this to good effect.
- NathanthePie 13y agoWow. The new Myspace is actually quite beautiful.
- cupofjoakim 13y agoThis is really nice. Definitely going to make my own.
- xutopia 13y agoI've been following Cheeaun's work for a few years now. The guy writes plugins for various tools, always hacking away at things. It's quite entertaining to see what he comes up with next.
- mildavw 13y agoI've been using his http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ to read HN on my phone for a while (is it years yet?) now. I try others as they appear and so far continually go back to his.
- yeukhon 13y ago1. you have to click on the comment icon to actually read icons 2. like most of the ios apps out there, there is no thread-level support. All comments are on the same level.
- mildavw 13y ago1. I don't see a problem with it. Go to the right for the details and back to the left for the front page. Makes sense. 2. ??? Comments threads are collapsible and indented properly. Are you perhaps not looking at it on a phone? Try it on an iPhone, it's great.
- kfk 13y agoNice. I would like to navigate clicking. Also, I would like to see pictures.
- Heliosmaster 13y agoEverything is just a pull request away :)
- atmosx 13y agoand some hours of code depending your level and experience :D
- cateye 13y agoWhy didn't you just use this? https://github.com/NUKnightLab/TimelineJS https://github.com/NUKnightLab/TimelineJS
- dmak 13y agoThis idea is great! I love it!
- kuldar 13y agoWhat's the simplest way to run it locally? I don't necessarily want to upload it to gh-pages, but simply opening the html won't work either.
- cheeaun 13y agoMake a copy of life.example.md, rename it to life.md, edit it. Run the page on a local server.
- kuldar 13y agoThanks. For anyone in the same position - Anvil is a good option for that. http://anvilformac.com/ http://anvilformac.com/
- filam 13y agoI didn't realize until far too recently that Python includes a built-in web server: 1. git clone https://github.com/cheeaun/life.git https://github.com/cheeaun/life.git 2. cd life 3. python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000 4. http://localhost:8000/ http://localhost:8000/
- jongala 13y agoLooks nice. Also out there, if you didn't know, is Preceden, which I have enjoyed using. http://www.preceden.com http://www.preceden.com
- matt1 13y agoPreceden creator here; thank you for the mention. Fun fact: Preceden was launched on HN almost four years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114834 :)
- visakanv 13y agoThanks for creating it! I really enjoyed using it! :-)
- contingencies 13y agoJS has some OK solutions these days (yours was probably very early), but print and other formats can be a hassle. For example, I spent some time looking at TeX solutions for timelines a few years back and found there were none with support for decent multi-page rendering, etc. I spent a few hours over the last few days finally improving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_t... too. Conclusion: everyone loves a good timeline. Spatial reasoning is a great way to simplify huge collections of dates and times to filter for visual trends. Unfortunately, there's really few good tools. There probably needs to be a standard markup language in this space.
- ape4 13y agoI can't handle the day/month/year syntax
- jcutrell 13y agoI'd love to see this as a zoomable timeline, where less important events are less visible when zoomed out, so that the timeline itself is fully visible at 100%. Draggable timeline in a max 100% w/h window would fix the scrolling weirdness for folks who care, and would also be usable on a touch device, but I think the interaction should always feel full screen, regardless of where you are in the timeline. Love this idea, quite a lot actually. Perhaps this is marketable to the folks at Timehop? :)
- timeglider 13y agoCheck out www.timeglider.com ---- a zooming timeline where importance is tied to size/visibility of events. full disclosure: my creation.
- WesleyJohnson 13y agoHow do you envision designating important events - or should the app determine those automatically?
- kaeluka 13y agokind of similar to my CV: http://stbr.me/blog/files/cv.pdf http://stbr.me/blog/files/cv.pdf (edit: which I did in latex)
- meerita 13y agoLooks wonderful but the horizontal navigation goes out of control. I would take Path's approach –if I have to mention something publicly known– to display the important events of your life.
- techiegirl 13y agoLooks great, I wanted to something similar, glad its here now :) But as most are saying, the horizontal view is not very user friendly!
- kasperset 13y agoAnother similar project http://almende.github.io/chap-links-library/timeline.html http://almende.github.io/chap-links-library/timeline.html
- jspc 13y agoThe DateTime syntax could be better explained: is it DDMMYYYY? Or MMDDYYYY?
- Semaphor 13y agoday/month/year in the readme is pretty clear I'd say. Though I wonder why not yyyy-mm-dd
- jcutrell 13y agoNote - here's a quick shot at how a scrollwheel modification may work: http://codepen.io/jcutrell/pen/jqiDK http://codepen.io/jcutrell/pen/jqiDK
- visakanv 13y agoI'm a non-programmer so I'm not sure if yours is better, but I mapped out my life on something called Preceden, you can see it here: http://www.preceden.com/timelines/64935-visakanv http://www.preceden.com/timelines/64935-visakanv hope the cross-reference is useful somehow!
- mergy 13y agoI've used Prezi recently for this as well. Pic >> https://alpha.app.net/jmergy/post/16369534/photo/1 https://alpha.app.net/jmergy/post/16369534/photo/1
- n1ghtmare_ 13y agoGood stuff. It looks great! Will definitely use it.
- ananth99 13y agoLovely :)
- tbirdz 13y agoSomething else this could be useful for is in visualization of historical events on a common timeline.
- amasad 13y agoRelated: I like the timelines on Bret Vector's Bio page http://worrydream.com/#!/Bio http://worrydream.com/#!/Bio
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ereckers 13y agoSome see a timeline for your life. I see potential for a visualized scheduling app for client projects. Nice work and implementation.
- baliex 13y agoThat would make for a really awesome cv/resume! And what if each block could also be a timeline of its own for more detail?
- atsaloli 13y agoReminds me of dandelife. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dandelife http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dandelife This article says dandelife open sourced its software: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/dandelifes-struggles-offer-lessons-for-start-ups/?_r=0 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/dandelifes-struggles-...
- rollerloller 13y agohttp://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/ http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/
- harshadura 13y agotimeline JS also awesome!
- rafeed 13y agoNeat, would be cool to add a link or hover over feature too for additional info on a particular event. I'll try to work on it if I have time, but hopefully someone else more capable is on it already!
- yogin 13y agovery nice work! I can definitely see adding links to other Life. Linking parent, child, partner, friends, .. you can even have companies ... would create an interesting graph of your life
- createmyaccount 13y agoLooks great! Would be cool if you could somehow show everything in one screen. Definitely trying it out.
- lzimm 13y agohey that's like the weird website i made for my internets a few years ago! http://www.lzimm.com http://www.lzimm.com
- CGudapati 13y agoVery nice indeed!
- chacham15 13y agoWhy not flip it at the 45 degree axis to make it go vertically instead of horizontally? That way we can scroll normally to see more.
- Raphael 13y agoIf you flip it, the text would be mirrored. Rotate.
- namuol 13y agoJust once I'd like to see a site with a horizontal scroll that doesn't just assume I'm using an Apple device.
- thekaleb 13y agoNow let's have a fork that uses remind[1] syntax. [1]: http://linux.die.net/man/1/remind http://linux.die.net/man/1/remind