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There are many zooming user interfaces (ZUI) that zoom in 2 dimensions, but are there any that zoom in just 1 dimension for people creating timelines, etc? Something like:

http://test.barrycarter.info/HTML5/svg-gen.html

only not sucky?

EDIT (more detail): I'm trying to create a zooming timeline application w/ the following properties:

  • Once you stop zooming or dragging (but not while you're zooming or dragging), the application pulls new data from a server. My current version uses fixed data.

  • The application has "tooltips": if you hover over a box/text, you get more information. My current version does this, but switching it HTML5 canvas would break this.

  • The distance between events changes as you zoom, but the width of the text/lines marking each event does not. SVG's lines get larger when you scale the canvas: there is no concept of a "fixed-width" line.

  • Zooms "smoothly" (continuously) like my version does, not discretely.

I started creating a framework for this, but realized someone else may've already done this.

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What exactly is your question here? What do you need to have an answer for? – JonW♦ Sep 26 '12 at 20:16
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closed as not constructive by Mervin, Benny Skogberg, JonW♦ Sep 27 '12 at 7:38

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1 Answer

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Yes, this is common in time-based data. For example, audio manipulation software like Soundtrack Pro lets you zoom in on the time axis. (It also lets you magnify on the amplitude axis, but that's not navigation.)

Online timeline visualizations will often allow this as well, for example, the stock market widgets on sites like Yahoo! Finance give you an 'overview' below which you can use to zoom in and out on various chunks of a stock's history.

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