My quick web search didn't show anything without caveats, but if there's any decent javascript that can be used to make the mouse wheel scroll the page sideways, that would be a really nice addition.
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This site has implemented this. http://vitaminsdesign.com/projects/lego-calendar/
Their JS in not minified, you may want to take a look.
I thought of that too, probably using some 'mousewheel' event, but later I realise the page height may grow as well (with vertical scrollbar) depending on the number of events.
I'm curious about why you chose the horizontal plane in the first place, given that the web defaults to vertical.
Well uh, that's how I visualize my life timeline in my head :) A straight horizontal path, left to right instead of top to bottom.
Maybe bottom to top would be a better approach :)
Maybe a hybrid approach could work? Automatically scroll down and to the right simultaneously. If I understood it correctly, the events in the timeline will go diagonally down. So if the scrolling happens intelligently by following the events, that should work, shouldn’t it?
I did something like that on my personal site, eg. http://jonasneubert.com/projects/printablegeography
To accommodate for small screens/windows it scrolls down until it hits the bottom and then goes right. On the way back it scrolls up first, until it reaches the top, then towards the left.
I just press shift + scroll wheel for horizontal scrolling
Just fixed this now by altering "general.autoScroll" in Firefox's about:config [on Kubuntu 13.04] to "true" [double-click it to toggle].
Now middle-drag works (press and hold down mousewheel, drag for direction of scroll).
Incidentally the new Myspace does this to good effect.
Wow. The new Myspace is actually quite beautiful.
A mouse? That's one of those archaic precursors to multitouch trackpads, right?
Enjoy playing games or using anything else than requires precision and speed on your fancy multitouch trackpad.
Also the scrollwheel on my mouse happily scrolled the page to the right when I pushed it to the right.
People might not enjoy your 'joke', but you do have a very good point.
When I looked at it the first time, the mouse problem didn't came up. I used my two fingers and like in the authors mind I just swiped to the left and the timeline moved as expected.
After reading the comments, and seeing the 'mouse problem' I could see it in my minds eye how it 'breaks'.
But seeing your comment I realised the web site only breaks for 'older' input devices.
I believe the website would work just as nicely on any multi touch cellphone, and it would make sense to scroll from left to right.
I wouldn't call it a very good point. I'd call it, based in no small part on your response, a bias towards people who use MacBooks. It's unfortunate to see this attitude towards the very large segment of the internet-using population that are using "older" input devices (which are still much more practical for many use cases).
If you actually look at the mousewheel JS events generated by goddamn Macbook trackpads, they're painfully evil. I have yet to find a really solid library for handling them, and my own attempts are hackish to the point where I'm considering splitting it into a special "Macbook trackpad" case. On the browser.
a bias towards people who use MacBooks.
and iPhones and iPads and android phones and kindle tablets and ....
Web traffic for some (most?) sites is already tipping over the half-mobile-usage direction (where "mobile" means "doesn't have a built in full-sized keyboard").
Exactly, its not just MacBooks. I used a Lenovo recently that has multitouch and scrolls wonderfully with two fingers. At work, I use a multitouch trackpad instead of a mouse.