To me it only worked without the 'dateTimeFormat': 'iso8601' declaration!

I've added a new dateTimeFormat called 'javascriptnative' so I can send Date() objects in valid JSON.

I create new parser in timeline_ajax/scripts/date-time.js;

SimileAjax.DateTime.parseNativeDate = function (string) {
    try {
        var date = eval('new ' + string); // string should be 'Date(yy,mm,dd)' or another valid Date constructor
        if (date == undefined) return null;
        return date;
    } catch (e) {
        return null;
    }
};

Then in timeline_ajax/scripts/units.js define the parser function which just calls eval('new ' + string) to construct a new Date object;

SimileAjax.NativeDateUnit.getParser = function(format) {
    if (typeof format == "string") {
        format = format.toLowerCase();
    }
    if (format == "javascriptnative") {
      return SimileAjax.DateTime.parseNativeDate;
    }
    return (format == "iso8601" || format == "iso 8601") ?
        SimileAjax.DateTime.parseIso8601DateTime : 
        SimileAjax.DateTime.parseGregorianDateTime;
};

I'm writing a django app and using django.utils.simplejson encoder like this in my view;

from django.utils.simplejson import JSONEncoder
def list_items(request):
  e_dict = {}
  e_dict['dateTimeFormat'] = 'javascriptnative'
  e_list = list()
  e_dict['events'] = events
  e1 = {}
  e1['start'] = 'Date(%s)' % datetime.now().strftime('%Y,%m-1,%d,%H,%M,%S')
  e1['title'] = 'Hey now!'
  e_list.append(e1)
  return HttpResponse(JSONEncoder().encode(e_dict), mimetype='application/javascript')

Note that the javascript Date() constructor expects the month to be zero-indexed, so I subtract 1 from the python datetime '%m' argument.

Regardless of how you enter the dates, the display in the popups will always be converted to display in GMT.

not work for me, using 'dateTimeFormat': 'iso8601' -> 'start': new Date(1216,2,15) error => v1 is null, n1=v1.getTime();

The timeline doesn't work on my website using precise dates strings or Date() objects. Only years are accepted, probably because i'm using MooTools?. Timeline is using jQuery, then I won't use it anymore... too bad, I loved it !