Sorry for the delay. My wife and I had guests all week long and our 3 year old has been wired as a result and I needed the weekend to recover 🙂
We end our timeline creator review series with TimeRime. Find out what we give TimeRime and get a glimpse into this tool’s features as well as their pros and cons.
In short, TimeRime did not impress me. After a standard sign-up process (which includes email verification), the issues start to surface.
After you log in, you are taken to your homepage. Just recently, they updated it so that you land on the page that has the “Make New Timeline” button. In the past, I was taken to a default timeline. It was incredibly frustrating. However, since they have fixed this, I cannot criticize them for past issues. This was a positive change.
After you click on “make a new timeline“, you are taken to a blank timeline that says “loading…” indefinitely. Took me a few attempts to figure out why. It will stop saying that as soon as you add an element. That is a little confusing. It should say something like “Please insert timeline details below”
If you are on a lower resolution monitor or have the screen zoomed in like I do (for my shot eyes), you have to scroll down to see the form to add an event.
You add the details of the timeline and select public, or private.
Now you can add items. It has the standard feature set. Name, date(s), zoom level, short description, add image and even add sound. You can choose the option to expand on the description by selecting “Place text and image also underneath the timeline“. Any images you add, whether to your item or to your extension, you will have to upload it.
The extended explanation is the typical WYSIWYG editor. Adding videos is very easy. You simply add the url and it automatically embeds it for you.
There is Save and New button that makes adding a series of events quick
The zoom level, as I will indicate later is a little moot given how small the icons are in general.
You can also add a Period to your timeline, but the period is limited in that you can’t add an image to your short description.
Here is the timeline after adding a few items.
There were a few inconsistencies that I didn’t care for.
• Text of the events is black, but a few end up being grey for some reason.
• The icons are very small and all on the same level
• You can select a starting time and ending time for an event, but you can add a period, which amounts to the same thing. It just handles them differently and the period does not have an image which is unfortunate (ends up a boring bar)
Here an icon is hovered over making it a little larger and displaying the small description
This is what you will see if you click on an item and scroll down. Unfortunately you have to scroll down and the extended event information does not pop up somewhere seamlessly.
Here is a user generated timeline that TimeRime kept wanting to show me. It got a little annoying. I didn’t want user generated timelines, I wanted mine. TimeRime kept showing me this timeline where ever I went. Long story short, I wanted to show you what it would look like if you had multiple elements. In one word; messy!
Icons are riding on one another. Navigating them by hovering over them is impossible and the dates are all over the place. You can make the dates line up a little more neatly by stretching it but why do I have to do the work? I’ve been spoiled…the app should expand to fit the dates neatly without my input.
“Oh the TimeRime toolbar”, says Omar longingly. What a nice little piece of coding this is.
Starting from left, you can:
Print: didn’t work. It tried to print off a cropped PDF of the timeline…odd
Link: provides you with the link to share the timeline
< > : Gives you the code to embed the timeline into your timeline 600 pixels wide is the largest…tiny!
Up/Down Arrows: Allows you to stretch out your timeline’s height allowing you to fit more info and or have loads of info organized a little more cleanly. But why would I have to do this manually clicking away on the arrow. It is neither a slider, nor is it automatic. And to the best of my knowledge, it does not remember your height when you log in again.
Zoom: You can zoom in and out. But you have to click again and again…why wouldn’t they just use a slider to make that task a little more up to date.
Show Entire: Shows the whole timeline in one click. This is a neat feature especially if you just spent the last 30 seconds clicking to zoom in to a specific timeframe.
Drag: Oooooh, this is my favorite button! It does…It hum….Well, it actually, well it does NOTHING! Where would I drag the timeline to?
Minimize: It minimizes/collapses your timeline. Ok, cool. Not sure why I would want to but it works
Close: Awesome. But if I’m done, why wouldn’t I just close the browser or navigate away. Why would I want to close the timeline? Oh, and it doesn’t work anyway. Awesome!
Despite my sarcasm, it is not a bad tool. If it were the only tool around, I would say it does the job and I may not have any complaints. However, having seen other tools, TimeRime does not stack up.
I’ll give it 1 DT and will throw in a wireless keyboard and mouse because it does the job but not very well when stacked up against some of the other much more visually appealing tools that have much better formatting and cleaner layouts.
Some additional notes:
- Free version has most of the tools we would need but you are limited to 100 elements. 100 seems more than enough.
- The ads on the free version however are not controlled and I some odd ads based on the timeline content.
- Educational Standard Package at about $175/yr provides private access to the schools own co-branded site with no ads and no external user generated timelines.
Technology in the Classroom 