Standardizing Event and Section Styles

The style of an event or section is its collection of configurable, visual attributes, including things like its font, text color, background color, time-range highlighting, and shape.

Giving All Events in a Section the Same Color

One really nice look for a timeline is to have a set of sections, each of which follows a standard color scheme. Sometimes you want to enforce this, and TimeStory lets you set this up on a per-section basis.

Select one or more sections, and go to the Event Style area at the bottom of the Inspector:

Standard Event Colors options in the Section Inspector

If you switch “Standard Colors” on, the Spans, Points, and Event Titles fields will appear.

Spans and Points set the standard colors for span bars and point icons within the section. The default value for these is “Header Color”, which keeps these graphics the same color as the section header background, for a clean look, but you can also set specific colors.

Use Event Titles to apply a consistent color to the text of any events in this section. “Automatic” behaves as normal, choosing a color for maximum contrast.

Default Styles

When you create a new section or event, TimeStory uses the current default style for that item. Sections, point events, and span events each have a separate default style.

If you select a section or event, you can tell TimeStory to make that item’s style the default for its type, using the menu items Style ▸ Set as Default Section Style, Style ▸ Set as Default Point Event Style, or Style ▸ Set as Default Span Event Style. (At most one of these items will be visible at a time, depending on what’s selected.)

The three default styles are saved with your document or document templates.

Copying and Pasting Style

You can also copy one event or section’s style to others, using Style ▸ Copy Style and Style ▸ Paste Style.

You can only copy style when one item is selected, but you can paste that style to any number of items.

(If you paste to a different kind of item than you copied from, such as from a point event to a section, only the applicable styles copy over.)