Timeline
The timeline is a horizontal strip along the bottom of the window. Every node that has a meaningful date is placed on it, so you can read the board in order: what was published when, what happened before what, where the gaps are.
Toggle it with the timeline button in the title bar. Drag its top edge to resize.
What is dated, and how
Each node type contributes the date that best represents when the thing happened, not when you added it to the board:
| Node type | Date used |
|---|---|
| Event | Its event date (plus time if set) |
| News Article | The article's published date, extracted when it was scraped |
| Social Post | When the post was published on the platform; falls back to capture time |
| Everything else | The node's content timestamp if you set one, otherwise when the node was created |
So a Note about a 1998 memo sits in 1998 if you give it a content timestamp; without one it sits on the day you wrote it. Content timestamps also carry a precision (exact / day / month / year / approximate) and an optional end date for spans.
Reading it
- Nodes are drawn as coloured dots in their type's colour. Overlapping items are stacked into tracks so nothing hides behind anything else; the toolbar shows how many items and tracks are on screen.
- The ruler adapts its labels to the zoom level - years when you are zoomed out, hours when you are close.
- Hover a dot for the title and date; click to open a popup with the node's summary and a button that jumps the canvas to it and selects it.
Toolbar
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| ◀ ▶ | Scroll earlier / later (or drag the strip, or scroll horizontally) |
| Jump to most recent | Centre on the latest item |
| − / + | Zoom the time scale out / in |
| Type filter | All types, Events, News, Social, Notes or Documents |
Uses
- Sequence checking. Put a claim (an Event) next to the articles that reported it and see whether the reporting predates the supposed event.
- Cadence of a feed. Filter to News or Social to see how often a source publishes and where the bursts are.
- Presentations. The presentation designer's timeline slide layout is built from the same dates.
Limits
The timeline reflects the current board only and does not filter by narrative; use the canvas's narrative filter alongside it. Nodes with no date at all (a Region, an RSS Feed subscription) are not shown.