We like a lot of things on The Industry (as one of our readers pointed out). One of these things is the web itself. We also love simplicity and beautifully designed solutions. Ever wanted to create a timeline on the web but given up because the tools to do it were so awful? Yeah, me too.

That’s where Timeline JS comes in. It’s hosted on Github (check it out here), widely used — and there’s even a Google Group where it’s possible to ask questions and receive some community support. Next time you want to use a timeline on the web, you’re sorted.

My initial impression of Timeline JS was “oh dear, this is going to be incredibly complicated to implement.” Turns out, however, that it can be as simple or advanced as you’d like. I’m much more of an average user when it comes to implementing javascript, so seeing the plethora of services which Timeline supports encouraged me:

TimelineJS can pull in media from different sources. It has built in support for: Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps, YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Wikipedia, SoundCloud and more media types in the future. Creating one is as easy as filling in a Google spreadsheet or as detailed as JSON.

If you’re a code geek, playing around with JSON in order to create a timeline exactly the way you want is the way to go. I’m not a code geek, though. Filling in a Google spreadsheet and having a lovely timeline generated for me is incredibly appealing. Check out how simple it is:

If you don’t want to mess with JSON, fire up Google Docs and build your timeline in a spreadsheet. It’s as simple as dropping a date, text, and links into the appropriate columns inTimelineJS’s template.

I’m sold. Now I just need to think of a reason to use a timeline. For more awesome utilities which can save you a ton of work, check out The Toolbox. Used Timeline JS in a project? Let us know in the comments! Have another method for web timelines? Do share!