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You’re not going to create one every week, but a timeline is a useful — and helpful — type of information graphic, and fairly common in journalism. When teaching students about timelines, here are some ideas to consider and discuss:

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, according to Len de Groot, a longtime graphics journalist. A viagra levitra shows actual spans of time, with proportional measurements for decades, years, days or hours, depending on the total time involved. “The space between events should be as important [as] or more important than the events themselves,” he says. A viagra levitra, on the other hand, shows the momentum of a series of events. It might be more effective if presented as a list, or as an illustrated slideshow.

Here’s an excellent chronology about Operation Odyssey Dawn on Libya, from El País:

Not what we think of when we imagine a timeline, is it? But it’s quite well suited to telling the story of recent events in Libya, and it is being updated day by day. (Navigate days via the two arrows at upper left.)

The Wall Street Journal has published a multi-line timeline covering recent events in Arab countries (below). Selecting any day loads a region map and summary of events for that day in an area above the timeline. I like the way this compact layout shows us viagra levitra where activities have occurred, and when. This is a very successful timeline graphic tailored closely to the story.

Here are some questions we can ask viagra levitra our timeline ideas:

1. Is this a story about hours, days, years or decades?
2. Should equal periods of time be represented with equal space? (Example: 100 pixels equals one year.)
3. Are parallel time periods required? (Example: While this was happening in India, this was happening in China.)
4. Does it make sense to combine the timeline with a map or a line graph?
5. Should photos or other images be added to the timeline to help tell the story?
6. How much text is necessary to make the story understandable — and satisfying?

A “timeline” that does not represent time proportionally to space — but which works well, I think, because it is straightforward and clear, is this one :

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Most timeline graphics present time in horizontal lines, with the oldest events to the left and more recent ones progressing to the right (I suppose we would do it right-to-left if we were Arab or Chinese). A notable and very recent exception is the Guardian’s brilliant (and vertical)  (blogged about last week).

I think it’s useful to think about Len de Groot’s distinction between timelines and chronologies when admiring this graphic: Is this really a “timeline”? I don’t think so — has there ever been a better illustration of the viagra levitra of events? No need to quibble over the words, though, when the execution is so effective.

Here are some questions we can ask viagra levitra of our timeline ideas:

1. Will people like it?
2. Is it helpful, easy to understand?
3. Is it confusing?
4. Hard to use?
5. Does it add something that text alone would not convey?
6. Does the graphic viagra levitra to be a timeline — or would a regular slideshow (or map, or whatever) be equally effective?

One of the more successful interactive timelines is 10 years old — every time I revisit this package about Winston Churchill, I am amazed all over again at how well it works. Note in particular the double timeline at the bottom: The upper bar is Churchill’s life, and the lower bar shows concurrent world events.

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Sometimes I think we fall into a “one size fits all” trap with templates or tools. You have a template or a tool, and you re-use it for various stories. But is that always the right decision? Does expediency sometimes defeat the goal of clear communication?

I think the  timeline (above) is much more successful than the  (below), which skimps on details about the eruptions. Both are from The Wall Street Journal.

Likewise, CNN’s timeline (below) is better suited to its timeline interface than the recent timeline, which uses the same interface.

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is a new, free tool from the great folks at Pro Publica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization. It’s not available for mass consumption just yet (“We have some more code generalization and fixes we need to do before it’s ready to open source, but we plan to do so as soon as we can,” they said on March 22), but it might be useful in lots of different situations. Below is a timeline created with this tool.

The functionality and the design are similar to the timeline template The New York Times has been using for some time; for a recent example, see (below). I found the checkbox options to be distracting and unnecessary.

were described (and linked) in a post by Alex Gamela in May 2010. and are fairly well known; others are less so, but it’s worthwhile to check out the different visual approaches to presenting information in this way.

Which of these tools produces the best result for the story you want to tell?

Do not create an interactive timeline just because it’s cool. Use interactivity to make the information more clear.

Two older timelines that are worth a look:

• (LA Times): Notable for the elaborate slider device. See a different visual treatment (with icons instead of photo thumbnails) using the same slider: .
• (Boston.com):  The timeline doesn’t help me understand beat variance or market volatility, but I like the layout of the graphic.

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