Saturday, July 01, 2006

Historical chronologies : Web technology for visualizing parallel events (Ajax)

Check out Timeline which allows you to visualize historical events occurring in parallel in your web browser using Ajax technology (Ajax can effectively turn your web browser into something as quick a desktop computer application but using data from web databases). Ajax is used by most new Google desktop Apps.

The particular events used in the example are the Kennedy assassination, and it really seems effective in historical situations where there is a lot of action going on in parallel, so the chronicle history that I specialize in which is pretty linear may not be able to exploit it. Also you need extensive dating of events, although I guess if you know the sequence you could space events out logically along the chronology too.