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Sequlr: a time sequence tool

Sequlr is a simple timeline service for the internet.

I’ve put together a little website to let people create and share timelines.  The service is Sequlr.  It’s a simple service, and hopefully conforms to the best practices of web development. Sequlr is built on Google App Engine with Django and all sorts of fun things (details on the technologies are included in the credits of the about section of the site). The use cases I envision are anything from historical sequences to personal diaries (you can keep a sequence private), and anything else where a timeline makes sense.  I even have an example of using the oEmbed feature with YouTube videos, in that case a selection of punk rock songs over its history. Some development notes:
  1. In designing the layout I tried to keep to a minimalist, clean design.
  2. I have tried to keep it accessible for users of accessibility technologies.  This also means that the site should work just fine if you disable javascript.
  3. A lot of different open-source tools have contributed to its development.
Being my own critic is difficult, so I would love some feedback on both the design and function of the site.  But, here are a few of my own complaints (I will keep it short):
  1. Having the search form at the top seems to make it unnecessarily busy.  My layout didn’t leave a good option for its placement.  It kind of fits there, but it could be better.
  2. The SIMILE Timeline has a lot going for it, but it’s also kind of clunky both to use and to integrate into a website.  I would like to replace it eventually, and I would strongly prefer to use an accessible replacement.
  3. The CSS could be a bit cleaner, but there’s a trade off between the caching and dynamic inclusion of particular directives.
  4. Adding events to sequences seems tedious, but that may just be the nature of the sorts of timelines I built for examples.
Anyway, check it out and leave some feedback.  I’ll be happy to hear it, even if it’s “no one will use this ever, but it’s also ugly.”

reference

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One thought on “Sequlr: a time sequence tool”

  1. By Elizabethorrjones

    From

    Mr. Dane,
    Interesting website. I actually think the idea is really neat. Once more people use it, you could put the sequences into categories and such.
    Some suggestions:
    1. If I stumbled upon the site, I would have no idea what it was initially. I suggest a summary at the top.
    2. The “view one of these feeds” section… what is it? I don't understand. Perhaps a sentence at the top of each sequence saying what it is.
    3. The colors aren't my favorite

    In all though, it's a really cool idea. I think it has great potential to be integrated into other websites.

    elizabeth

    P.S. EMAIL ME.

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