Project Scope and ToDos
- Create timeline pages where one can see the whole timeline of a particular event
- Give timeline items type or category icons so that you can easily scan what is happening.
- Allow the user to enter the timeline at any individually sharable link of an event and seamlessly scroll up and down
- Deliver timelines as a plugin that can be extended by other Eleventy users
- Auto-create social-media-ready screenshots of a timeline item
- Integrate with Contexter to have context-full link cards in the timeline
- Leverage the Live Blog format of Schema dot org
- Allow each entry to be its own Markdown file
- Handle SASS instead of CSS
Setting up a Timeline Plugin?
Ok, so I really love the work that Molly White has put in to create timelines in their work. Molly has created a great starting point in an open-source 11ty-based timeline project and then a much more advanced timeline for their coverage of "web3" that is also open-source.
So, I decided to set up a version for myself. I want to build multiple timelines within my context-center site so I set up a branch to try and set up a way to do that. My hope is that not only can I set it up for multiple timelines within my own site, but I can also set it up within a plugin that other people (and future sites of mine) can use easily. I haven't really seen templates packaged up this way so this feels like unexplored ground. I think it might be possible, but maybe not! I guess we'll find out.
So first I want to port over Molly's basic timeline work, this gives me a good starting point and lets me avoid the fact that I'm bad at design. I'll set up a timeline plugin and start moving it over. I don't want to deal with trying to do Sass builds inside the plugin so I'll also try to move her Sass work into standard CSS for now.
I've set up a basic plugin structure to start me off and contain the work.
I'll start with the variables.
git commit -am "Set up first folder and start porting CSS"