Creating a Timeline to Celebrate University's history

[Christopher Davis]

Hello all. I'm new to and am amazed by what a tremendous resource uwebd is. I've been in web development since the late nineties and have been working for a University for 6 years. Can't believe I didn't come across you guys sooner!

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone was aware of any software, freeware or open source flash that might help me to create a timeline of the University's history. I just don't have the time or staff to create one from scratch, and the resources to outsource the work just aren't there.

Examples I've seen include http://www.csun.edu/50/timeline and http://www.temple125years.com and while I especially admire the design of the latter, I just need something bare bones: a way to assign text and images along an interactive timeline.

I've seen services like Dipity and Timetoast, but don't know how good the tools are (especially when it comes to seamlessly embedding the resulting timeline).

If anyone has created a timeline for their University's site, I'd appreciate any advice you can give.

Thanks much!

- Chris

[Megg Brown]

I've been meaning to check out the links here for a similar project:
http://www.demoscience.org/resources/category/28

[Christopher Davis]

Thanks, Megg. I'll check 'em out and let you know what I find, too. Appreciate the tip.

[Curtiss Grymala]

We haven't done anything official with it, yet, but we're looking at using TimeRime.com to develop our "College History" timeline. I e-mailed the owners of TimeRime to get more details about their TOS. They basically said, as long as we weren't using it to actually sell a product, we were okay.

They have no commercial licensing, so if you are planning to use this as a specific marketing tool to sell a product or service, you won't be legally able to use TimeRime. Otherwise, go for it.

[Edward Terry]

I've trying out the Similie Project for my own timeline.

The maintainability of it is what drew me to it. Keeping up with 1 xmll file was something I could do.

http://www.austincc.edu/archive/

[Christopher Davis]

Thanks. Looks good and easy to use, but my boss is going to want photos embedded in proximity to the event descriptions. Great that it uses 1 xml file, though.

[Megg Brown]

We're looking for a way to make a timeline, with photos, from an XML file. I'd like to set something up in our CMS (Cascade) that creates the XML file -- with folks adding content from a form in the CMS. After looking at a few of these I'm more inclined to find a piece of software I can install on-site, rather than have it hosted elsewhere and embedded.

[Christopher Davis]

How do you like Cascade Server? We just barely signed the contract and haven't gotten our feet wet, but I had no idea it could handle something like a timeline? Like you, I'm more inclined to go with one of the turnkey solutions listed here in this thread, but I would be curious if anyone has ever gotten anything like a timeline togther in a CMS, especially Cascade. Thanks.

[Megg Brown]

The CMS I want doesn't exist, so Cascade is a second choice to that. You have to get to know it for a while -- after a couple years I still feel like I'm guessing at a lot of things, but the user community is awesome.

For the timeline, I'd likely create a page per event with a data definition, then use XSL to craft the XML file for use outside the CMS.

When we first got Cascade I imagined it would be the master database of all web content and the main tool to publish pages as they display online. Now I see it, still as the master database of content, but we publish different things like include files and publish content to a database which is picked up by PHP scripts to display the content. Our catalogue is like this -- each page is published both to MySQL, and as HTML pages for use as include files -- both are used by custom scripts we wrote for search and display of content on the catalogue site and all the department/program sites. The whole thing is built one page per section/course, but assembled into the pages you see here:
http://catalogue.vassar.edu

Database publishing might also be an option for the timeline -- publishing each entry to MySQL, then using a PHP script to craft it into the appropriate XML file for whatever timeline application we go with.

[Edward Terry]

well I don't know how it would integrate into a CMS but you could probably develop a web app that manipulated an XML file through a form. It my write to a mysql db and then have scripts generate the file from the db.

[Christopher Davis]

Just wanted to close the lid on this partcular Pandora's box by saying thanks to those who made suggestions about timelines; we ended up sub-contracting for custom flash. See http://125.philau.edu/index.php. What's nice is that the flash is almost 100% customizable, with xml to inform the dates and easy-to-swap-out images. The vendor is stellar and I'm happy to give them a plug: Cooper Graphic Design.