Request for Timeline instructions/working example

How, exactly, is a timeline implemented using the Scholars Lab plugin (standard and/or Neatline)? Visual chronology of historic Items would be truly useful, yet we have had more difficulty with the functionality of the timeline plugin than any other Omeka feature. No sites powered by Omeka seem to have succeeded in using it . . .

I just tagged a 0.1.1 version of Timeline, which I'm hoping will address most of the issues folks have been having about the timelines not loading. I'm not sure if it will help with your situation, but if you can provide more specifics about the difficulties you've countered, maybe we can get it working.

As for instructions, they've been available on the Omeka codex. If something in the instructions isn't clear, I'm happy to help when I can.

I'll also point out, in case you don't know, that we're actively developing the NeatlineTime plugin as a more flexible replacement for the Timeline plugin. While there is no formal tagged release yet, the master branch is currently stable, so if you'd like to try out that plugin and let us know what you think, it would help us greatly.

Jeremy -- Many thanks. The beta NeatlineTime plugin is a great advancement and appears to be fully functional.

Two problems, possibly related and both caused by existing modifications on our end:

1) The timeline does not load collection items selected via the Search Query if the collection is nested by the CollectionTree plugin.

2) When using our custom themes the timeline javascripts are not called/loaded into the header of the public view page. The jQuery script is displayed correctly in the http Div container, but throw the error: 'NeatlineTime is not defined.' Maually adding the header javascript links does not correct the problem, nor does reconfiguring our custom.php. The problem also occurred when I tested custom themes developed by more skilled Omeka users (e.g., Erin Bell's Deco).

Your suggestions as to possible causes and solutions would be much appreciated.

One more quirk, less likely caused on our end -- items with DC:dates prior to Jan. 1 1900, (1900-01-01, etc.) are not displayed on the admin or public timeline pages. An item that does not appear when dated, say, 1854-11-15 will appears if re-dated to 1901-11-15. '¿Cuál causa?'

The timeline does not load collection items selected via the Search Query if the collection is nested by the CollectionTree plugin.

Could you clarify this a bit more? Did you select a collection or subcollection? If you select a collection, I don't believe CollectionTree will return items in any of that collection's subcollections. If you select a collection in the advanced search, it should return items associated with that collection, but not items in any of the subcollections.

When using our custom themes the timeline javascripts are not called/loaded into the header of the public view page. The jQuery script is displayed correctly in the http Div container, but throw the error: 'NeatlineTime is not defined.' Maually adding the header javascript links does not correct the problem, nor does reconfiguring our custom.php. The problem also occurred when I tested custom themes developed by more skilled Omeka users (e.g., Erin Bell's Deco).

The problem with Bell's Deco theme is that it doesn't include a display_js function in the theme's header. This is one function added to Omeka in 1.3 that, with the queue_js function, allows theme and plugin developers to add javascripts to a queue to be loaded to the page. NeatlineTime adds its scripts using queue_js. I'd suspect this is the same issue with your theme, but I wouldn't know for certain without seeing the code for it. If it's in a public repository somewhere, feel free to share it.

One more quirk, less likely caused on our end -- items with DC:dates prior to Jan. 1 1900, (1900-01-01, etc.) are not displayed on the admin or public timeline pages. An item that does not appear when dated, say, 1854-11-15 will appears if re-dated to 1901-11-15. '¿Cuál causa?'

This might be caused by the way your version of PHP is interpreting that date. I just updated the master branch of the NeatlineTime function to use Zend_Date instead of PHP's date functions. This *should* take care of this issue, but if you can check it out and confirm for me, I'd appreciate it..

We have display_js set up correctly to use the queue.js function, so the problem is elsewhere. Though we are not using the Deco theme, we did follow E. Bell's Omeka implementation of Video.js and Flowplayer fallback in our custom.php. The scripts might conflict with the Timeline execution (e.g., "Error: Failed To Derive URL Prefix For Timeline API Code Files"). Though less likely, the issue w/ items in subcollections not displaying on the timeline could also be due to a conflict.

The problem I suspect is actually in the Timeline plugin itself relates to the limitation of the Items to dates >1900. The timeline start date is correctly correlated with the earliest Item but if dated prior to 01/01/1900 the Items are not displayed. A kink I think (?)

Thanks for all.

The scripts might conflict with the Timeline execution (e.g., "Error: Failed To Derive URL Prefix For Timeline API Code Files").

Can you tell me where exactly you're getting this error? A link to your site would be even better.

The problem I suspect is actually in the Timeline plugin itself relates to the limitation of the Items to dates >1900. The timeline start date is correctly correlated with the earliest Item but if dated prior to 01/01/1900 the Items are not displayed. A kink I think (?)

Can you let me know if if the changes I added to NeatlineTime a few hours ago helps with your issue? I updated the way dates are parsed, and tested this with a variety of dates prior to 1900 with no issues.

It might also be helpful to temporarily switch to one of Omeka' prepackaged themes, like the "Thanks, Roy" theme, and see if you get the same errors.

Bullz-eye. The Timeline is up
& running, currently displaying Item info + thumbnail of "Gulliver's Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms" dated 1726 and nested in a subcollection under the Collected Works by J. Swift as confirmation of compatibility of the Timeline and the CollectionTree plugins.

I welcome your diagnosis of the error in the theme but our Omeka "site" is open access in proximity of our local network on the opposite coast from you. As verbal description, the error occurs on the timelines/show/itemID page immediately upon openin and is apparently generated by a failure in transfer of data from api.simile-widgets.org. The javascript console reports 2 errors in the script execution: "Simile Ajax is not defined," on the timeline show page at

//<!--
SimileAjax.History.enabled = false; window.jQuery = SimileAjax.jQuery //-->

and "Timeline is not defined" in the neatline-time-script.js at

'var eventSource = new Timeline.DefaultEventSource();' [line 14].

Presumably this info is meaningful to those knowledge in the art. I admittedly fall short of that threshold.