Mobile UI Overview

This article provides an overview of the key components of our mobile interface, to help you get started quickly and make the most of your time using Aeon Timeline.

Our mobile app displays different views in Portrait and Landscape orientations, which will suit different stages of your workflow.

Portrait Orientation

The portrait interface is broken into the following components:

Toolbar
Workspace
Footer

We discuss each of these components in more detail below.

Portrait Workspace

The main Workspace is where you view and edit most of your timeline data.

Due to the restricted screen size on a mobile device in portrait orientation, the primary data views are restricted to nested tree views. Use the view selector in the middle of the footer to choose which list to show:

Chronological List View: lists items in sequential order based on when the event occurred (this may include items without dates)
Narrative List View: lists items in narrative order based on the order yo present them
Various Types: separate icons to show lists of other item types that are not part of your chronological or narrative order, such as People and Places.

You can read more about the difference between chronological and narrative data in Chronological vs Narrative Order.

Landscape Orientation

The landscape interface is broken into the following components:

Toolbar
Workspace

We discuss each of these components in more detail below.

Landscape Workspace

The main Workspace is where you view and edit most of your timeline data.

Due to the restricted screen size on a mobile device in portrait orientation, the primary data views are restricted to nested tree views. Use the view selector in the toolbar to choose which list to show:

Timeline View: a linear, graphical view of events on a timeline, which shows dated events in chronological order;
Narrative View: a graphical view showing items within a hierarchical narrative structure (e.g. of chapters and scenes);
Various Types: separate icons to show lists of other item types that are not part of your chronological or narrative order, such as People and Places.

You can read more about the difference between chronological and narrative data in Chronological vs Narrative Order.

Item Inspector

Tap on any item to view more information about that item in the Item Inspector. This allows you to edit all information about an item, including its label, color, dates, relationships and property values.

Edit Mode

Aeon Timeline operates in two modes: Normal mode, and Edit mode.

To enter Edit Mode, press and hold your finger on the main workspace area, until the toolbar changes to a vibrant blue color. You can exit again by clicking on the Done label in the toolbar.

Edit Mode enables additional interactions with your list that are disabled in normal mode:

Action	Normal Mode	Edit Mode
Tap an item to select it	Only one item can be selected. Item selection immediately opens the Item Inspector Closing the inspector clears the current selection	User is able to select multiple items. Tap on an item to add or remove it from selection. Click the pencil icon in the toolbar to open the Item Inspector and edit all items.
Drag items within a view	Disabled to prevent accidental edits when scrolling around the timeline	Select one or more items, and use your finger to drag those items into a new position: Drag to a new date in the timeline Drag to a new position in the narrative

Two different versions of the toolbar will be shown, depending on whether the app is in Normal mode or Edit mode. The following table lists items with are shown in either the Toolbar or Footer, depending on your orientation:

	Close Timeline: Close this timeline and return to the file browser screen
	Add item: create a new item or calendar marker and add it to the focused work view or matching entity list
	Search: open window to search within existing items, or perform search and replace throughout the entire timeline
	Filter: open panel to filter visible items in the Chronological or Narrative Lists
	Scroll to date: Scroll the timeline view to a particular date, or the chronological list view to the item closest to that date
	Settings: Open the Timeline Settings window
	Undo: Undo the previous change made to your timeline file
	Redo: Redo a change that was just "undone"
Done	Exit Edit Mode: Tap this button to leave edit mode again
	Edit Selected Items: Open the Item Inspector to edit all selected items at once (Edit mode only)
	Delete Selected Items: Delete all selected items from your timeline (Edit mode only)
	Overflow menu provides access to a number of other functions: Shift Items By: Move selected item dates by a specified offset Make Consecutive: Arrange the selected items to occur one after the other Make Dependent: Add dependencies between the selected items to ensure they always remain in the same order Embed in New Parent: Add a new item into the view, and put all the selected items inside it
	Tutorial: open the Tutorial to learn more about using Aeon Timeline

Clicking on most Sidebar buttons will open a panel to provider access to the selected functionality. A short summary of these panels is provided below.

Search Panel

The Search Panel allows you to search for events, people and other entities within your timeline. Any item matching the entered search term will be shown within the search panel, regardless of whether the item is currently visible within the workspace (i.e. search is unaffected by view types and filters).

You can also perform a global Search and Replace within the panel if you wish to alter text (such as a person’s name) that is referenced in many items.

Where appropriate, items from this list can be dragged into the main view (e.g. to add an item into the narrative order)

Filter Panel

The Filter Panel allows you to apply filters to reduce the number of items visible in your work views. Filters can be applied globally across all work views, or limited to the focused work view.

You can read more information about filtering in Global and Local Filters.