Family Historian User Group

After spending a good half hour trying to generate a Timeline and just producing a blank picture I discovered that I had to have a live Internet connection for this to work. Could you please explain in fairly simple terms why this is. Also how do I save the timeline picture for later use in documents?

ID:6065

The timeline's use a Java applet to create the timelines. So they are not pictures.

If you want to use them off line you can download the Smilie package and install it locally and modify the plugin to use the local copy of the javaapplet.

I have not had a good look, but the output could be probably look good associated with the person's web format page, much in the way that the maps are I guess.

Here are a couple of thoughts.

First the Plugin should say it needs an Internet connection, or test that a connection is present.
The 'Map Life Facts' Plugin has such a test that seems to work OK.

Yes. the 'Timelines' could probably be linked into web pages just like the 'Map Life Facts' Geocode Maps.

One possible way of saving the 'Timeline' as a picture is to Zoom the WebPage using Ctrl-MinusKey(-) or Ctrl-PlusKey(+) until the whole lifespan is visible, and then use PrtScrn or the Windows 7 Snipping Tool to capture the image.

Thanks Jane, but modifying the plugin would be beyond me I'm afraid. Thanks Tatewise I'll try PrtScn.

The timeline is an interesting plugin and it should encourage me to at least add some estimated dates to facts which I was not doing before.

A couple of 'nitpicks':
1/ Not every piece of information is on a line of its own - if the text overlaps then a new line is started.
2/ I would add a space after all the : for instance Child:James:Born would become Child: James: Born or better Child: James Born:
3/ I have a born date of 4 July 1940 and an Christened August 1940 ( estimate ) and the Christened circle is before 0 but the born is on 0
4/ Born is the first item and christened is the last - may be the order I input the data into FH? But if I use the 'list in record order' button first in FH there is no effect. The records apart from the born is newest at the top of the list going backwards. I would expect it the otherway.

Anyway not complaning as I probably could not do it but some observations [grin]

I'm finding some odd inconsistencies in the pages produced by this plugin. (Using the 'Quick View Current Record' option: I haven't tried selecting multiple records yet).

1. For some individuals the strip across the top is tan coloured between Birth and Death, and shows ages in 5 year increments.  Life events are displayed in the grey area below.  I assume this is the correct dislay.

2. For some individuals the strip across the top is all a continuous light grey (no tan) and the words Birth and Death do not appear, but the ages do still show in 5 year increments and the life events are displayed below.

3. For some individuals the strip across the top is a continous blank light grey and even the ages do not display. However the life events are still displayed below.

4. For some individuals the whole thing is blank apart from the title. (When I say blank, I mean there is no text but the strip across the top is still a lighter grey than the body of the page).

Whichever individual I select, the display for that particular individual is always the same. But I cannot find any pattern in which individuals produce which types of display.

I'm using Firefox browser and Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit.

[Edit] Bill Henshaw in another thread has reported yet another variation:
5. The start and end of the timeline still show at the top but the rest is blank.

Made a couple of very minor changes that I think make it read a bit better:

startLabel: 'Birth',

addFact(ptrEvent,'Child: '..fhGetItemText(ptrChild,'~.NAME') ..' '..fhGetDisplayText(ptrEvent))

It looks like a lot of the formatting is from either the timeline class or the FH database?