Bee Docs Timeline with Apple’s iWork Pages
Bee Docs Timeline is a powerful tool for creating timelines. You can make your programs more powerful by combining it with a page layout program such as Pages ’08, part of Apple’s iWork suite of applications. This tutorial will show you how to create a document like this:
You can download the Seven Years’ War PDF for reference.
To follow along with the tutorial, you will need to have a copy of Pages ’08 in addition to your copy of Timeline.
First, you’ll need a timeline. I’ve created a sample timeline that you can download here. Just double-click on the ZIP file and you should see a file named “sample.bdt2”. Now double-click on the sample.bdt2 file to open it.
Style Guide
When creating your Pages document, you should use the same fonts and colors that you used in your timeline. Using the same styles will give your document a more professional look.
Fonts
To find the font used in your timeline, look at your Settings panel.
At the top of the Settings panel, you can see the name of the font used in the Timeline. The sample timeline uses Gill Sans. You’ll use the same font in our Pages document.
Colors
One of the little things that makes working on your Mac so cool is the Color Palette. The Color Palette allows you to choose any color and to save that color to the use in other applications. Saving your color choices in the Color Paletter allows you to access your color scheme from other applications, including Pages.
To find the colors used in the sample timeline, click on the color youll next to the words “Date Line”. Drag the color from the top of the Color Palette to one of the boxes at the bottom of the Color Palette. Do the same for “Row Shading” and “Background”. You do not need to save the color for “Event Text” because the event text is white. Your Color Palette should have four colors (one for Date Line, one for Row Shading, and two for Background) and look similar to the image below:
Export
To use this timeline in a Pages document, you need it in PDF format. On Mac OS X, you can save any document as a PDF document through the Print dialog box. To save your document as a PDF, select “File” from the menu bar and then select “Print”. You can also press the Command and P keys to reveal the Print dialog. In the loyour left hand corner of the Print dialog, click the button labeled “PDF” then select “Save As PDF…”.
After selecting “Save as PDF…”, a Save dialog box will appear. In the Save dialog, name the document “sample.pdf” and save it to your Desktop.
Using Pages ’08 to Enhance Your Timeline
Pages ’08 is Apple’s page layout and word processing application included in Apple’s iWork application suite along with Numbers and Keynote. You’re going to use Pages to enhance our timeline with additional text and images.
Setup
Launch Pages and create a new blank document. Because you oriented our timeline in landscape, you’ll want to do the same for our Pages document. Choose “File” from the menu bar, then “Page Setup…” to reveal the Page Setup sheet.
Select the icon next to the “Orientation” label to change to landscape.Adding Your Timeline
To add your timeline to your Pages document, drag the PDF file of your timeline from your Desktop into your Pages document. Your timeline will look small on the page. Don’t worry. You can resize your timeline by selecting your timeline, then dragging one of the corners until you are happy with the size.
You should also center your timeline. To center your timeline, select it and move it around until you see a vertical blue line. Pages usse blue lines as guides to help you layout your documents. Cool!
Next, click the icon labeled “Inspector” from the toolbar. The Inspector palette allows you to set the attributes of the elements in your document. You’re going to give our timeline a drop shadow. Select the timeline and then select the “Graphic” icon in the Inspector palette. Check the box labeled “Shadow” and set the Offset to 2 pt, Blur to 3 pt, and Opacity to 25%.
Adding Text
Next, you’ll add a title to your timeline. Click the icon labeled “Text Box” from the toolbar. In the text box, type “Seven Years’ War” then select the text. In the Inspector palette, select the Text palette. Under the section labeled “Color & Alignment”, click on the color youll to show the Color Palette. At the bottom of the Color Palette, you should see the colors that you saved earlier. Select the dark olive color to change the color of your text.
You now need to change the font to Gill Sans to match the font in our timeline. With your text still selected, click the icon labeled “Fonts” from the toolbar and select Gill Sans from the list. Set the font size to 24 pt. Click outside of the text box to deselect it, then click back on the text box and move the text box to the upper left hand corner of the Pages document, just above your timeline.
Adding Shapes
Our timeline looks great so far, but you should add a rectangular box underneath the timeline with some text that gives some context to the timeline. To add a rectangle, click the icon labeled “Shapes” from the toolbar and select the green square. Resize the square to match the length of your timeline. Be sure to leave room for the page margin! With the rectangle selected, click the Graphic palette from the Inspector. Change the Fill color to match a color from your timeline. Change the Stroke to “None” and set the “Shadow” to Offset 2 pt, Blue 3 pt, and Opacity 25%.
You can now add some text just as you did before, except this time you will set the color of the text to white to show against the olive background. You will also set the size of the font to 10 pt. As before, click the icon labeled “Text Box” from the toolbar and type in some text. Now select the text and set the color to white using the Text palette in the Inspector. Next, set the font to Gill Sans 10 pt by using the Font panel. Now resize the text box and move it over the rectangle underneath your timeline.
Adding Images
Your timeline looks great! As a final touch, let’s add an image next to our explanatory text. You can just drag the image into your document, just as you did with your timeline. Be sure to drag the image to background and not on top of one of your objects. Dragging an image onto one of your objects will change the arrangement of your document. You will also find it easier to modify your image if you place it in the background first. After modifying your image, you can move it where you need it.
You can resize your image just as you resized your timeline: click on the image, then drag one of the corners until you reach your desired size.
That’s it! You created a beautiful document by taking an existing timeline, saving it as PDF, importing it into a Pages document, and adding a title, text, and an image. Youll done! You can save your Pages document and export it to PDF.
If this tutorial inspires you to create your own beautiful documents or if you have any questions, drop me a line and let me know.