Alternative to SIMILE Timeline for timeline visualization? [closed]
Maybe you can use the Timeline from the (open source) CHAP Links Library, developed by Almende.
http://almende.github.com/chap-links-library/timeline.html
Have a look at the examples to see what you can do with the Timeline. It is quite flexible, you can choose your create your own layout and use your own CSS/HTML in each individual event.
Check out Timeglider (see http://timeglider.com/jquery/) which is an open source (MIT), JavaScript (uses jQuery) scrolling timeline under active development. It meets your first 4 requirements I believe but I am unclear about the specifics of your 5th requirement. I have only done some simple experiments with Timeglider and don't know it very well but maybe this is a potential solution for you.
We needed the Simile Timeline at Lab 21k so we took the source code, cleaned it up and published it using bower. So you don't need an alternative anymore.