: How it began
Some years ago, thinking about my dad, and the interesting life he enjoyed, I was motivated to create his biography. Many photographs were available; he had owned one of Kodak's original box cameras... in fact, had built a pinhole camera as a young man.
I always enjoyed listening to him talk about the fascinating places he had worked, his many brothers and sisters, and all the interesting automobiles he had owned or driven.
What if I could put all this in context, using multiple time lines filled with photos, using my computer skills and graphic arts background? I wanted to be able to look at the finished project and see what he was driving and where he was working, during World War II, for example. Maybe even what Mom and her family were doing at that time.
No software existed to do this. What was needed was a combination of graphics arts publishing software, charting software and multi-media software. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, my desire to illustrate Dad's life was the father of Softimeline.
Categories, Bar Segments, Home Page, Thumbnails, Event Pages. etc.
The Softimeline Home Page in a finished Project is a mosaic of thumbnail photos, superimposed upon a stacked bar chart, over a grid of time units.
The pictorial timelines become a visual table of contents, where the viewer can scroll the Thumbnails, Bar Segments and gridlines vertically through time. Up to 12 timeline Categories fit on a page; their bold headings (the Category names) remain on screen for constant reference. Each Thumbnail photo on the Home Page is a link to an "Event Page", which is similar to one slide in a slide show. When browsing a Project, as the mouse cursor passes over a Thumbnail, a small identifying label will appear. Clicking here will open the linked Event Page and display the large photo from which the Thumbnail was taken, along with text, optional sound or video, or additional photos.
The "Bar Segments" make up the vertically stacked bars for each Category which appear beneath the Thumbnails. Each Bar Segment represents a period of time and is created by the author by entering a start date and an end date in an entry form. Bar Segments can impart valuable information: the time you were employed at a company... the time period you lived in a particular house or city... when you owned certain cars... or the time frame in which you dated Valerie. Bar Segments may also have identifying labels.
Thumbnails on The Home Page may be used to represent a singular event; a wedding day, the birth of a child, a two week vacation, any event in time that you wish to document which does not lend itself to a Bar Segment.
While the Thumbnail might only link to one page of the vacation, as many adjacent Event Pages as required could describe the rest of it.
Softimeline was designed by an art director, so it does not look like most of the software out there. The goal for version 1.0 was to make it easy enough for Aunt Betty to use, but make it look like a professional graphic designer had authored her Project.
Every art director knows that color photos are best displayed against a black or white background; color backgrounds simply steal attention from the photos. However, every slide show creator knows that white backgrounds equate to snow blindness if the presentation is displayed on a movie screen or a large monitor.
Therefore, the default background color is black with options for dark blue or dark green. The background color (and the entire Color Theme) may be changed at any time during the authoring process; this will change every background, throughout the project. If you decide you liked it better with black backgrounds, change it back. When a pro designs a page, one of the initial considerations is: how many photos must be accommodated... and whether their shapes are horizontal, vertical or a square format.
Softimeline's templates were created with this in mind. So you will find Template Designs with from one to five picture boxes in every combination of horizontal, vertical and square configurations.
Version 1.0 offers two Layout Styles. One displays photos evenly spaced in a traditional style. The other presents picture boxes and text boxes stacked and butted against each other for a more contemporary look. There are no templates with ribbons, flowers, doilies, stardust or other decorative items in version 1.0 of Softimeline. Here again, the designer felt these ornaments simply steal attention from the color pictures, and the prime directive is to make your photos look good and your finished project look professional..
Without a doubt, future versions of Softimeline will allow more latitude to the advanced user and also to the scrapbooking crowd. |