Zoom in and out of the timeline you are viewing

Preceden gives you three ways to zoom into a portion of your timeline:

1) Click and drag to select a period of time

Click an empty part of one of your timeline's layers and drag left or right to select a range of time:

A timeline with part of its date range shaded by a click and drag selection, annotated with an arrow showing the direction of the drag

Preceden will zoom in to that period of time. To zoom back out, click the Zoom Out button that appears in the top right corner of your timeline:

The same timeline zoomed into the selected range, with the Zoom Out button highlighted in the top right corner

You can keep zooming in this way until the timeline is down to a scale of a few hours, which is as far as clicking and dragging goes.

2) Manually set a date range in the Date Range settings

You can also set a date range by clicking Appearance above your timeline, then opening the Scale section.

Set the Date Range dropdown to Zoom into date range, then fill in the Start Date and End Date fields that appear below it.

3) Set a date range relative to today

Set the same Date Range dropdown to Range relative to today instead. The Units Before Today and Units After Today dropdowns then control how much of the timeline you see, from 1 to 15 units on each side.

For example, you could show 1 month before the start of this month and 4 months after it.

The Units dropdown at the top of the Scale section has to be set to something other than Automatically optimize for this option to work, so that Preceden knows how many days, weeks, or months to display. If you leave it on Automatically optimize, saving your changes returns an error asking you to pick a unit.

Moving around while zoomed in

When you zoom in with either of the first two methods, Preceden also draws part of the timeline on each side of your range. Scroll the timeline sideways, or press the left and right arrow keys, to move earlier or later in time. Preceden remembers where you end up, so your timeline opens at the same spot the next time you view it.

Notes

To zoom back out, click the Zoom Out button:
Zoom Out also sets the Units dropdown back to Automatically optimize, so Preceden picks the best scale for your whole timeline again.
Clicking and dragging to zoom is turned off while the timeline uses Range relative to today, because that range is always tied to today's date. Click Zoom Out first if you want to select a period by hand.
Preceden won't necessarily use the exact dates you selected with any of these methods. It will automatically add some padding to the content and try to avoid cutting off event names that would otherwise appear half on/half off your timeline.
If you are zoomed in and then add an event outside the range you are viewing, Preceden will automatically zoom out so the new event is visible.

If you encounter any strange issues with zooming, please don't hesitate to reach out at [email protected].