T2 Sneak Peaks: Search

Search in T2 was a feature I wanted to get right. It turned out to require a bit more design attention than you might expect. I don't know if you've stopped to think about it before, but search works different ways in different applications.

For example, in iTunes search hides the categories and songs which don't match the criteria, so the list if songs being shown is getting smaller as your search criteria becomes more specific. In a word processor, search does not hide all the non-matching words. Instead, it highlights the found words in context of the document, often sequentially.

When you are looking at a timeline with many events, what do you want to do when you use the search feature? Probably, you want to locate a particular event in order to make a change, or perhaps you are presenting the relationships between certain types of events. For example, take a look at the following timeline based on WWI events as described in Wikipedia:

As I mentioned in a previous post, there are 254 events in this timeline and it spans over 100 pages. Let's say that I wanted to present all of the events related to France. If I search for the word "france", the events which do not match will fade down but will stay in place in order to provide context to the events regarding France:

By contrast, in Bulk Edit mode the search hides all of the events which do not match the search (à la iTunes). This is because the chronological relationships between events are not reflected in this view, so there is no value gained by keeping the events on screen which do not match the search.

T2 Sneak Peeks: Bulk Edit Mode

If you need to create a timeline with very many events, it is often best to enter all the data first and then format the timeline. In the current release, I often use Excel to create tab delimited text files of my events and then import them. However, it is not very convenient to use two different applications...

I am pleased to announce that T2 will allow an editable table view of your events! It looks like this:

In table view, you will be able to add, delete, and edit events as well as drag images onto events and assign event colors. You will also be able to use search to find exactly the events you are looking for.

As an example of how helpful this feature can be, the timeline shown in the screenshot has 254 events from wikipedia (printing on letter size paper spans 140 pages). To color all the events related to Russia red, I searched for "russia" then did a "select all" and chose red as the event color. I'll give more details on search in the next post...