Zoomable integrated view of Wikipedia timelines

November 7, 2013 6:44 AM

Stefan Haustein's Timeline pulls timelines from Wikipedia, parses them and puts them into a coherent zoomable view.
posted by a snickering nuthatch (11 comments total)

Oh my god.
posted by gwint at 6:53 AM on November 7, 2013

Awesome idea let down by a not very good interface.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:54 AM on November 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

Not being able to control scroll and zoom separately kind of ruins it.
posted by Foosnark at 6:55 AM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is cool.
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:00 AM on November 7, 2013

You can use your scrollwheel or trackpad to scroll and click on the + and - to zoom separately, and you can hold down shift while scrolling to zoom.
posted by gwint at 7:01 AM on November 7, 2013

But note that if you try to scroll past either end of the timeline, it will zoom in.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:04 AM on November 7, 2013

OK. I had never heard of a natural nuclear fission reactor, and just learned there was one, that lasted....oh.....a few hundred thousand years. there goes my productivity for the day.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:14 AM on November 7, 2013

Also ends at 2012, with nothing from this year. And more importantly, nothing from the future/predicted events part of Wikipedia also.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 7:15 AM on November 7, 2013

I love stuff like this, and bravo to him for implementing it, but it feels very Version 0.2. As a start I think it would look nicer if he

made time horizontal
did something about the small bits of text drowning in seas of bright clashing colors
implement PgUp PgDown
added a small map that showed your location in the top-level time line
posted by benito.strauss at 8:42 AM on November 7, 2013

You can use your scrollwheel or trackpad to scroll and click on the + and - to zoom separately, and you can hold down shift while scrolling to zoom.

There are no +/- buttons to click on, and holding shift has no effect. At least in Chrome.
posted by Foosnark at 8:58 AM on November 7, 2013

One of the cool things I found was tracking the rise and fall of atmospheric co2 and surface temperature while scrolling. i was disappointed to see that the numbers are fixed throughout the quaternary period.

Foosnark, when you mouse over the timeline on the left the zoom option pops up in red.
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:21 PM on November 7, 2013