Dipity.com Dipity Blog

Hello Dipsters. We’ve been listening to your requests and have taken a few steps to make timeline creation and shared editing a bit easier. It is by no means a finished product, but we have added a timeline creation wizard that we think makes the whole experience much more user friendly. In addition, we fixed a bug that was preventing users from sharing timelines via email. Finally, you can now add editors OR contributors to your timeline via their Dipity username or email. Hooray! Let’s take a closer look at the new features and changes.

Dipity chef Justin Time serving up some hot new features.

Permission Settings
We’ve changed sharing and editing a bit. First of all, you can now allow people to edit via email. The trick here is that the email you enter has to be the one that person used to sign up for their Dipity account. Since, this might not be the easiest way, we made it possible to invite people via their usernames as well. If you an invite someone to help you with your Dipity timeline who is not currently a user, they will receive an invite to sign up for Dipity. Spreading the word!

We also split collaborators into two categories: editors and contributors.

Editors:
People you invite to be editors of your timeline have full control over sources, events and settings. They can add events to the existing timeline, edit or delete events that you, or anyone else, has contributed and can also change elements like the topic thumbnail, center on date or default zoom. Be sure you want people added as editors to have that much power over your timeline!

Contributors:
Contributors can add events to your timeline, but they cannot edit or delete any existing events or timeline settings. This is the perfect permission setting if you want to open up your timeline for people to participate, but without ceding too much control of the basics. You essentially become the moderator of the timeline, as you will be able to edit or delete events added by contributors.

The Timeline Wizard:
Let’s face it, people have short attention spans these days. If they can’t figure something out right away, they will probably just put it down and walk away. To make things a bit easier, and to make sure people stick it out when building sweet interactive digital timelines, we have added a step-by-step process that guides the Dipster through timeline creation.

Step 1: Enter the basic info
The title and description of your topic are very important elements of the timeline. The title goes into the URL, and the description helps people find your timeline via search. A good title is short and to the point. A good description includes important keywords related to your topic of choice and a general overview of why you are creating the timeline.

Also, make sure to add a topic thumbnail for your timeline. This picture will appear when sharing your topic via Twitter, Facebook or by link, and will also make your timeline more appealing if it ends up on our hot topics page.

Finally, edit your permissions. Leave fields you don’t want active blank. For example, if I want my timeline to be publicly viewable, but want several other users to help contribute I would set my permissions like this:

Step 2: Add Events to your timeline
Here you will find the same easy-to-use tools to build your timeline. From this page you can add social media sources and RSS feeds to populate your timeline. You can also add events manually, which generally results in a more interesting and visually appealing timeline.

Step 3: Advanced Settings
The third and final step is the most important to the overall appearance of your timeline. Here you can toggle commenting off and on, pick a theme and more. The most vital elements of advanced settings are the default zoom and center on date. The default zoom determines the starting zoom level when a visitor first views your timeline. They can then use the zoom bar to move in and out, but first impressions are important, especially on embeds.

The center on date tool allows you to adjust the middle point of your timeline. For example, if you are look at a 10 year scale, and your timeline ranges from 1990-2006, 1998 would be the perfect center point for your timeline.

Here is an example of the same timeline embed with different default zoom and center on date settings. Check out how different the visualization of each becomes.

The History of Legos (100 year zoom level, 1965 center on date)

The History of Legos (10 yr zoom level, 1973 center on date)

The History of Legos (1 yr zoom level, July 1, 1973 center on date)

We set this up in response to a call from users to simplify the sharing and timeline creation process, so we hope you like it. If you have any feedback, suggestions or praise, feel free to try us on Twitter (@Dipity) or on our GetSatisfaction page.

Remember, this is not a finished product so if you make a great suggestion, we’re more than likely to use it in an upcoming release. Please do share!

Coming soon: A screencast walking through the new features.

Thanks for reading,

Steve, Community Manager