The timeline is what launched this idea — two thousand years of Christian writing laid out so you can wander through it. Lately I’ve made it a little easier to sit with.

If you’ve ever wished it had more room to breathe, there are now two ways to give it some. Wide mode expands the timeline to the full width of your browser window. Full-screen mode hands the whole screen over to it and scales everything up, so the sweep of centuries is easier to take in; a tap of the Esc key brings you back when you’re done.

We’ve also added a small color key along the bottom, because the bars carry more meaning than they first let on. A solid author bar marks an author whose works we’re already showing; an outlined one marks an author whose works we haven’t added yet. Works follow the same logic — solid where we have an edition available, outlined where we don’t yet. Once you know what you’re looking at, the whole timeline reads more clearly.

Living authors used to stop at a tidy line, which never felt quite right for someone still writing. Their bars now run all the way to today and stay open at the edge, the way a life still in progress should.

And I’ve smoothed out how selecting things behaves. Choose an author and their works light up alongside them. Clear your authors and the works you’d picked stay put. Move between collections and your selections travel with you instead of vanishing. Small things on their own, but together they mean less clicking and more reading.

As always, if something looks off, tell us. For now, we hope the timeline is a little more inviting to lose an afternoon in.