· v2.0.0
A new look: the atlas set like a printed one, in light or dark
- Timeline
- Map
- Investigate
- Design and reading
The whole atlas has been redesigned. It reads like a printed atlas now: a serif for names and headings, a quiet paper in light and the navy of the atlas's home page in dark, one gold for whatever you chose, and six inks for politics, conflict, nature, culture, science and trade. Every bar, row and mark shows what it is at a glance - a state's flag for the year, a person's face, an event's picture, or the kind of thing it is as an icon - and the map stands on a plain plate of land and sea with the states named and flagged as an atlas names them.
- Two rows of controls instead of five. The header holds the view, search, sharing and help; the toolbar holds the range, the zoom, Show - every topic and kind of thing in one panel, with what is drawn against what is held - and how much detail to draw.
- On the timeline, a state's bar wears its flag, a life its face, and every other bar the icon of its kind. The rail beside it reads "In 1550": what was standing, happening and alive in the year, best known first.
- An entry opens on what it is - its name, its years, what was true of it in the year on screen - with the question it raises as a button: why did it end, why did it begin, why did it happen. The rest is in tabs: an overview, its rulers, its land and people, its connections, and the sources for every fact.
- Investigate asks its question in words - "Why did the Peasants' Revolt happen?" - and answers first, in one sentence, before listing the causes by the part they played, each with how strong its evidence is. The theories whose conditions held are listed under the causes, one line each; Compare cases now takes the whole width, with the theories, a cause removed and the patterns in the record in tabs of their own.
- The map no longer stands on a street map of today. It is a plain plate of land, lakes and rivers, with each state in a soft tint of its own, named in capitals with the flag it flew that year. Every layer, the ground and the relief are in one Layers menu that says which of them reach the year on screen, and the rail beside the map reads what began and ended around it.
- On a phone the atlas no longer asks for a wider screen: the timeline reads century by century for one region, an entry opens as a sheet, and the map and search are a tab away.
- A first visit offers a four-step tour rather than starting one, and the lane for things no place was found for is now called Location unknown.
- Every chart answers a hover: a bar, a century, a reign or a point on a line says what it is and what it counts, beside the pointer.
- A state the record held twice is one state now: Carthage and Ancient Carthage, and seven empires that stood beside their own dynasties - the Abbasids, Achaemenids, Sasanians, Seleucids, Ptolemies, Seljuks and Samanids. The Seleucid Empire now has its borders on the map, and an old link to the second record opens the state.
- Different states that share a name are told apart by their years, as their articles are: the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Hungary (1526–1867), the Jin dynasty (266–420) and (1115–1234).
- A person belongs to the state they were born or worked in, never to the nearest one: Xenophanes and Pythagoras were filed under Troy and are Ancient Greece's, and Gandhi is the British Raj's. Someone born where no border is recorded is left without a state rather than given a wrong one.
- With a picture of the ground or the relief on, the states keep their colours; the flags no longer blink as the cursor moves; Show on the map always flies there; and the atlas's name is followed by its author's.