TimeStory 3.5 Release Notes

September 15, 2023

Version 3.5 contains one key feature—much improved automatic text coloring over various backgrounds—and enjoys some other improvements as a result.

Precise Automatic Text Colors

Until now, if you selected “Automatic” as an event title’s color, that title would be made entirely either white or black to try and maximize its visibility, even if it crossed over multiple background colors. Starting in 3.5, though, it will switch between white and black anywhere its background changes:

A small screenshot showing a point event whose text switches between black and white as it passes over multiple background colors — Automatic title color in action

The same screenshot as before, this time with text staying black and thus being low contrast over the darker background colors — Automatic title color, prior to 3.5

Between time-range highlights, separate background colors for the past, weekend shading, and more, complex timelines often have rich and overlapping background regions, making this a long-needed update.

This even applies as you type:

Animated GIF of text being typed; as typing proceeds across a white, then dark blue, then white background, the cursor and text colors adapt to black or white for best contrast

Thanks to this new precise coloring, TimeStory now allows, in many cases (but not all), text to flow out of a span event. This can dramatically increase the amount of text you can fit into a timeline at smaller timescales.

Text spilling out of the right edge of a span event; the event's color is blue, the text within the event is white, and the text beyond its edge is black

Finally, this change also fixes a bug where the automatic text-color logic didn’t properly account for overlapping time-range highlights in the past, if you had a separate background color set for it.