I have been eagerly awaiting parity with the Mac version, particularly for Freeform Corkboard and Stacked Corkboards. But at least in the beta, it seems cards cannot be above or below each other, or overlap each other. Am I just doing something wrong? Because I am using Windows, I am not familiar with how these features should work, but the picture for the Mac version shows pictures stacked on top of each other. Is this doable in the Windows beta version? I am also trying to do a timeline where there would be cards both above and below a line, and they would sometimes be above one another. What am I missing?
Time. The Windows v3 beta is still a very rough beta and there are major chunks of functionality not yet in place. If you have the fortitude to live in the house while it’s being remodeled (and take frequent backups of your data), then hang on and the results should be worth it – but it’s going to be crazy.
Beta 4 includes the freeform corkboard, which allows cards to be placed anywhere on the corkboard, so they can be made to overlap. You can switch from the standard corkboard to freeform via View > Corkboard Options > Freeform. (There is also a button in the corkboard footer, with an icon matching the menu option, which will switch you to freeform.) Freeform mode is available when viewing a container (a folder or document group), not for multiple selections. It will be available for standard collections as well, but this isn’t yet available.
The macOS version also includes a “stacked corkboard”, whereby you can select multiple containers and view their contents on separate rows or columns on the corkboard. This is like the standard corkboard in the sense that the cards can’t be freely arranged on the board, so there aren’t gaps, but it lays out the cards in separate lanes. This isn’t yet implemented in the Windows beta.
Both macOS and Windows have an “arrange by label” view for the corkboard as well, where the cards are placed on coloured label lines, either vertically or horizontally. This doesn’t allow for cards to occupy the same “space” though–you can’t have two cards side by side (or one above the other, if the label lines are running horizontally). Rather than a story timeline, where you might have two events occurring at the same time and therefore at the same place on the timeline, you’d need to think of this more as a “reading” or “page” timeline–even if two scenes are set at the same time, one occurs first in the linear book, so that card comes before the other.
Going by your description, it sounds like the freeform corkboard may work best for what you’re after, so I’d give that a try.