Upgrading the Career Timeline with 8star Labs
I decided to upgrade the career timeline component to use a more polished, professional timeline from 8star Labs. The original custom timeline was functional, but I wanted something with better visual hierarchy and a more refined look.
Upgrading the Career Timeline with 8star Labs
Date: January 6, 2026
Author: Joel Varty (with technical details by Cursor AI Agent)
The Change
I decided to upgrade the career timeline component to use a more polished, professional timeline from 8star Labs. The original custom timeline was functional, but I wanted something with better visual hierarchy and a more refined look.
Why 8star Labs?
8star Labs offers a collection of beautifully designed components that are shadcn/ui compatible. Their Timeline component caught my eye because it:
- Has a cleaner, more modern design
- Better visual hierarchy with proper spacing
- Built-in connector lines and icons
- Fully accessible and responsive
- Easy to customize with Tailwind classes
The Implementation
The upgrade was straightforward thanks to shadcn's CLI. I just ran:
npx shadcn@latest add @8starlabs-ui/timeline
This installed the Timeline component and all its dependencies. Then I updated the CareerTimeline component to use the new Timeline primitives:
Timeline- The main container (default export)TimelineItem- Individual timeline entriesTimelineItemDate- Displays the date rangeTimelineItemTitle- The job titleTimelineItemDescription- The company, dates, and description
What Changed
Before:
- Custom timeline with manual positioning
- Complex flex layouts for alternating sides
- Manual connector line positioning
- More CSS to maintain
After:
- Clean component-based structure
- Automatic connector handling
- Better responsive behavior
- Less custom CSS needed
The data structure and CMS integration remained the same - only the presentation layer changed.
Joel's Thoughts / Reflections
[Space for Joel to add personal thoughts, reactions, design decisions, or creative direction]