Church Historical Timeline application
| Church Historical Timeline Index edit | |
Contents |
Project Description
The Timeline Application is intended to present personal, church, and world history in a visual chronology and enable the user to scroll through time and click on individual events to get more information, links to scriptures and wiki pages to learn more about a given historical event. Additional information is available via the Church Historical Timeline FAQ
The example (see below) is a rough proof-of-concept to demonstrate what we can do with the MIT Timeline library. However, the next step is to design a solution that is flexible enough to accommodate multiple timeline views for various purposes. File:LDSTimelineConceptualDiagram.pdf
Project News
2010.April.1-2: LDS Developer's Conference in Salt Lake City & Riverton, Utah
Church Historical Timeline Example
A running example of the application is not currently available, but we will be working on getting one running again in the near future. (7/17/2011)
Existing Timeline Features
The Timeline has the following notable features:
- A filter that enables you to enter any text and the timeline will hide all events except the ones whose description contains the text you enter in the filter box.
- Four colored highlights that will highlight the events whose description contains the text you enter in the highlight boxes. (The top boxes highlight LDS events in the top band, the bottom boxes highlight World events in the bottom band.)
- Shortcuts enable you to click and jump to a specific time period on the timeline. (The timeline has events from 4000BC to the 21st Century.)
- You can click and drag the top and bottom bands to scroll quickly through time. Also notice the small event indicators in the top and bottom bands - though details are not available.
- The middle two bands contain LDS events (top) and World events (bottom). You can click and drag these bands to scroll slowly through history.
- You can click on events in the middle two bands to bring up the summary window - which contains additional details, links, pictures, and a link to "More Info" which will take you to the LDS Wiki pages where you can read more about a given event.
Design is currently underway for the Timeline Application - the existing code is for demonstration purposes only.
Guiding Principles for the Solution
| Community Development Best Practices edit | |
- Adaptable - enable members to create their own individual timelines and share them and/or combine them with other timelines:
- Church History - what religious event happened on a given date
- World History - what happened on a given date in world history
- Genealogy Information - what were my relatives doing at a given date, and how did that relate to church or world history
- Friends & family timelines
- Developed by member-volunteers working under the direction of the Church (and Tom Welch, Technology Community Manager)
- Should facilitate content contributors adding events, details, links, and wiki pages where members can learn more about historic events
- Released to the general Church membership for their use in study and learning
- Intuitive and easy to use for non-technical Church members.
Current Needs
We currently need the following individuals to work on this project.
- Graphic Designers - The current layout of the timeline is very rough. We need some mockups that are more attractive and perhaps present a more usable design.
- Technical Writers - We need to keep this wiki article and associated wiki articles clean and easy to read and use. If you want to help maintain this page, please let Tom Welch know. Also, check into the community portal for wiki guidelines.
- History Experts - We need help from the community in adding events to the timeline and help in creating wiki articles that can go into more depth on church and world history events.
- Developers - We are beginning the DB and architecture designs. Tom Valletta is taking the lead on this work.
- Testers - We need to be prepared to test along side development. We need testers who can write test cases based on the development criteria and when the application is ready begin running tests, reporting defects and automating features as they are developed.
Team Contact Information
| Name | Phone | Location | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robert Husted | 608-225-1498 | rhusted@gmail.com | Madison, WI | Project Lead |
| Dale Lake | 608-630-4652 | dwlake@gmail.com | Madison, WI | Quality Assurance |
| Rob Foster | 801-240-0847 | fosterrm@ldschurch.org | Salt Lake City, UT | Interaction Designer |
| Tom Welch | 801-240-1609 | welchtc@ldschurch.org | Salt Lake City, UT | Project Sponsor |
| Chris Chapman | 435-554-8322 | chris.chapman@aggiemail.usu.edu | Logan, UT | Developer |
| Shawn Ridenour | 801-794-0380 | shawn.ridenour@hotmail.com | Spanish Fork, UT | Developer |
| Scott Wolff | 403-618-7379 | scott.wolff@hotmail.com | Calgary, Alberta | Developer |
| Paul Wilhelm | 801-726-1979 | ressik@gmail.com | Riverton, UT | Developer |
| Micheal Stuart | 612-6140-2632 | ldamstuart@hotmail.com | Canberra, Australia | Developer |
| Tod Robbins | 801-809-0092 | todd.d.robbins@gmail.com | Kirkland, WA | Developer |
Email List: rhusted@gmail.com; dwlake@gmail.com; fosterrm@ldschurch.org; chris.chapman@aggiemail.usu.edu; shawn.ridenour@hotmail.com; scott.wolff@hotmail.com; ressik@gmail.com; quickpratt@gmail.com; ldamstuart@hotmail.com
Email Link: Timeline Team