I've seen examples with more than 5 lines/rows, I just don't know how to get there...
4 Answers, 1 is accepted
First of all, let me explain how the timeline orders the items - the items are sorted by StartDate first and then by Duration. Then, every item is positioned using the following logic - in case there is space for the item in the first row, it is positioned in the first row; if not, the item checks is there is space in the second row to show without overlapping other items; and so on. That is why, in case your items do not overlap, all will be positioned in the first row. In your particular case, five rows are enough in order to show all items and that is why, the timeline orders the items only in five rows. The basic idea behind this ordering, is that the items are displayed as close to the time line as possible.
Currently, there is no easy way to influence the positioning algorithm but we are always looking for customer feedback. Can you explain you idea in greater detail - how do you expect the items to be positioned? It will be great if you can send us a couple of screenshots, demonstrating your idea as well.
Tsvetie
the Telerik team
Rank 1
What you say about the items being placed on the same row if they don't overlap only seems to hold true on certain zoom levels. When I populate data in my timeline and I zoom in to a weekly or daily view then the data is fine, nothing really overlaps. But when I scale back to a monthly view the data bunches up and overlaps in several places - and I don't even have a lot of data in the control. I guess that it could be all right... if users want to see the detail then they have to zoom in, but it seems like if the items are going to overlap they should be pushed to another row when the control zooms - but then you may end up having way too many rows if you have a lot of data, so I don't know what the answer would be.
Attached is a screenshot of the overlapping in the monthly view...
Rank 1
The way it is now is if items overlap and they are the same type (ie same visualization) then it looks like there is just one item. In the screenshot I attached there are several items overlapping in the blue-green bars on the chart, you just can't seem then because it all blends in. This isn't really that good because it looks like there are fewer items then there really are.
Thank you for the time you took to share your ideas with us. We always appreciate customers' feedback and in this case I am pleased to tell you that your ideas are actually what we have been discussing for RadTimeline. Basically, we are thinking about adding support for interval specific events and this feature will give you the means to implement the behavior you describe.
The other idea, that you yourself found not so good - to rearrange the items, based on the zoom level, does not cover all scenarios. Additionally, we do not think it is a good idea to move items around while zooming in/out as well.
On a side note, I would like to clarify what I meant before with "if items do not overlap". Basically, you are correct that this is only partially true. This is actually true for the DateTime points and lines on a timeline and only partially true for the elements that represent those DateTime points and lines on the RadTimeline timeline. This is a result of the fact that the events with no durations are represented by an element with fixed size and that size does not change based on the zoom level. As a result, the element for such an event will be 10 pixels wide, no matter if you are viewing centuries or hours.
Tsvetie
the Telerik team