Bee Docs Timeline – Mac Genealogy Software

Bee Docs' Timeline
Bee Docs Timeline 1.53: Bee Docs’ Timeline Product Page
Publisher: Bee Documents
Type: Timeline Application
License: Commercial/Shareware ($39.98)
Last Updated:March 20, 2007
Languages: English
Hardware Requirements: PPC/Intel
MacOS Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3+ Universal Binary
Official Blog
groups.google.com User Discussions.
Demo: Demo is available, and limited to 10 events.

Official Description:
Our team of tireless engineers is working day and night to bring you another next generation information management tool, Bee Docs’ Timeline!

Bee Docs’ Timeline leverages Apple’s Quartz graphics technology to create the most beautiful and accurate timelines. Our automatic context sensing technology does all the hard work, automatically selecting the best layout and date settings based on your data and output media. Data can be entered directly into Bee Docs’ Timeline or imported from Excel and other popular software applications. Additionally, the timelines that you create using Bee Docs’ Timeline can be exported as PDF for use in your favorite presentation or page layout software.

Features:

Official Notes:
Use Bee Docs’ Timeline to easily create:

* Trial / Discovery Exhibits
* Teaching Tools
* Project Management Charts
* Statistical Analysis of time-based data sets
* Much much more…

TIP: If you are printing your timeline to paper, I recommend that you
first set the page scale to 95% using Page Setup in the File menu. This
will shrink the Timeline on the page slightly so that the entire
timeline prints (because most printers can not print to the exact edge
of the paper). Then you can slice off the margins using a paper cutter
and tape the pages together. If you are exporting to PDF, leave the
page scale set to 100%.

Screenshots:
A tutorial, complete with screenshots, and including one that uses Apple’s Pages, can be found on the Bee Docs’ Timeline website here

Reviews: (If you’d like to contribute one, Contact us)

Other Products by Bee Documents:
Document Management and Imaging Services and Products at BeeDocuments.com

Version History
Version 1.53 (Mar 2007)
* Fixed bug with exporting events that contain line breaks in the label
* Added Jazz Pianists and Poets to example timelines

Version 1.52 (Oct 2006)
* Updated iCal script for importing calendar events

Version 1.51 (July 2006)
* Stability improvements
* Lower Price

Version 1.3 (April 2006)
* New Feature: Timelines can now span up to 20 pages (previous limit was 10 pages)
* New Feature: Universal Binary! Optimized for both Intel and PowerPC Macs.

Version 1.2 (Sep 2005)

There are no new features in this update, but we have fixed a bug that caused an application freeze in certain timeline ranges. It was very rare, but could cause you to lose work if you happened to stumble upon it

Version 1.1 (Jun 2005)
* Several bugs fixed
* Version 1.0 did not allow user to manually change the timeline date range. This has now been fixed.

Version 1.0
* Commercial version. No expiration date but limited to 10 events per timeline. Purchasing a license key allows unlimited events.
* Performance: Improved stability with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
* Performance: Drawing speed improved
* Install: Removed installer in favor of disk image
* Applescript: Added export features to Applescript dictionary.

Version 0.86
* Performance: Fixed bug with auto date correction that sometimes caused crash
* Performance: Improved stability with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
* Performance: Drop down menu for paper selection more stable
* Performance: Corrected error in Dec 25 example timeline that sometimes caused crash
* User Interface: Export split into “Export Events” (for event data) and “Export Timeline” (for graphical charts)

Version 0.85:
* New Feature: Extensive help documentation (accessible through the help menu)
* New Feature: User customizable foundation height
* New Feature: Cut, Copy, Paste Events enabled
* Performance: Export and printing speeds dramatically improved
* Performance: Editing large timelines performance improvements
* User Interface: The “year only” checkbox has been removed. Previous functionality is now controlled by date format.

Version 0.80 (Apr 2005)

* Fixed crashing bug related to events with no event label
* New date format added: 500 B.C. / A.D. 2005
* Menu items and keyboard shortcuts added for add and removing events
* Menu items and keyboard shortcuts added for zoom control
* New zooming features: Zoom to Fit and Actual Size
* Export file name defaults to document name
Version 0.77 (Mar 2005)
* Added export events to text (Tab Delimited)

* Allows installer to use any local volume (no longer limited to the default drive)

Version 0.76 (Mar 2005)
* Bug: Removed an extra export button
Version 0.75 (Mar 2005)
* Look for the Export item in the File menu. You can export to several
graphic formats including PDF, TIFF, PNG, GIF, and EPS. For multipage
timelines, this feature will save the entire timeline as one long
graphic (as opposed to “Save to PDF” from the print menu which
separates the timeline into printable pages). This should make it
easier to use your timeline in other software packages. For example,
export as a PDF to use it as a graphic in Keynote or Pages. By the way,
Apple’s new Pages software is great for adding titles, graphics, or
additional text to your exported timelines! Export as PNG to use with
Microsoft Office products…
* One thing that is fun is exporting long timelines as TIFF files and
using the “Ken Burns” effect in iMovie to create movies that pan and
zoom over a timeline. Also, we used an exported timeline with
Macromedia Flash to pan over a timeline on our website. Check it out:
http://beedocuments.com/timeline.html

Version 0.70 (Mar 2005)
* Page Spanning: Create timelines up to 10 pages long
* New Formats for Event Dates (including AM/PM times and international date format)
Version 0.65 (Feb 2005)
* Disassociated the application window size with your timeline size. This allows for zooming and scrolling and will make it easier for us to add page-spanning support in the near future.
* New tab in the options menu for adjusting the page layout. This functionality was accessible through “Page Setup” before, but it will be a little easier to experiment with different settings if it is in the options drawer.
Version 0.60 (Jan 2005)
Added:
* Ability to import dates from iCal, Address Book, OmniOutliner using Applescripts
* Applescript support
* New date format
Fixed:
* Print dialogue (future releases to concentrate on improving print abilities/customization).

Version 0.55 (Jan 2005)
* Support for dates earlier than 100 AD (please read PDF instructions)
* Event date formats for BC / AD and BCE / CE dates
* Automatic Date Range functionality and user interface upgraded (The checkbox to control this behavior can be found in the timeline tab of the options panel).

Version 0.5 (Jan 2005)
* Added multiple level undo.
* Checks for minimum system requirements.
* Added a native file format to store event names that utilize international alphabets. If you saved tab delimited text files or XML data files with previous versions, those can still be opened and will be automatically converted to the new format.
* The next release will expand the export options to a wide variety of graphic and data formats.

Version 0.45 (Jan 2005)
* Undo implemented
* Some performance improvements