This week for my final project I have begun to work on entering the information about the events I am going to include in my timeline into a google spreadsheet so that it can be integrated into the timeline software I am using. I have chosen to use timeline JS for my project software since it offers a good balance of depth of detail while remaining visually appealing, however I am now worried that I will not be able to implement the interactive feature I had in mind at the start of the semester since there is not a lot of room for customization. After doing some more research I have come to the conclusion that such a specific feature like a “threat level” meter that corresponds with the events of a timeline would ultimately require a certain amount of coding, and since I have little to no experience with coding I think it may be best to avoid it entirely and instead devote my efforts to ensuring the information is as accurate and interesting as possible. Timeline JS provides the ability to include start dates, end dates, start times, end times, titles, descriptions, related media, and metadata categories without the need to code, and whil eI am a little disappointed that I won’t be able to complete my original idea I think the focus of personal event will still be interesting enough to engage users and students while teaching them about the topic.
My next steps are to continue filling out the google spreadsheet and finding primary source media to correspond with event. Once that is done I can upload the entire list into the timeline JS software where it will automatically create a chronological timeline. I will most likely end up having to go back in and tweak certain aspects to make sure the information is correct and in the right order, as well as editing the visual appearance of my project to match the theme of the topic. So far I have already compiled a fairly long list of events so for now it is just a matter of finding specific dates and times associated with those events, which is sometimes easier than said. Overall I feel as though things are going smoothly and I am on track to complete this project by the end of the semester.
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