Explore the battles of the American Civil War (1861-1865) through time and space.
https://kieroneil.shinyapps.io/American_Civil_War_Explorer/
The app starts on a random day and displays the recent battles on a rustic map of the US. You can use the slider-bar to go to a specific date or start the auto-pilot feature to auto-advance 15 days at a time until the end of the war.
Zoom in or out like in any map. Click on a circle to see details about the battle.
There are instructions on the left side and the right side has headlines from the New York Times for the same time period that you are viewing.
The trickiest part of the design was to create the 3-panel display. This app will use all the real estate on your screen so maximize it for best experience. The first map tiles I used didn't allow users to zoom in far enough because some battles occur very close together geographically. The map tiles I settled on lets you zoom in very close to differentiate every battle and has a great look & feel for the time period.
The data comes from the US National Park Service and the NY Times. The entire app, including data is less that 3MB!!
Building this app was a true labor of love. I hope you enjoy it.
Look at the source code and data here: https://rstudio.cloud/project/238112
Contact kieroneil@gmail.com if you have any questions or experience issues.