New feature: BCE date support

It's been a long time in the making, but we've started to roll out one of your most requested features; BCE date support.

Starting today you can add BCE events and timespans to your timelines on the mobile version of the site. I'm very excited to share this new feature with you.

Adding BCE date support has required a complete rethink of the way we handle dates on the site, from the user interface to server code and our database layer. To ensure a smooth transition, we've slowly been phasing in changes across all layers of the application.

We are finally confident that this transition is complete and are now opening up BCE support to everyone.

Once you've added a BCE event or timespan to one of your timelines, you will be able to view them in the 'list', 'print' and 'beta' views of the timeline on desktop. The mobile version of the site now has BCE date support throughout.

We continue to work on opening up BCE date support across all devices, including desktop. This last phase will also complete our transition from Flash-based timelines to JavaScript-based timelines after which the new version of the timeline, currently in beta, will become the default.

I look forward to sharing more updates on our progress soon.