This is an example timeline of swimlanes that contain segments over time. Try zooming and panning the charts.
Sometimes with large datasets it is more efficient to sample the state for each pixel instead of trying to render individual segments. Here is a Canvas implementation that is fast, but has fewer styling and interactivity options. There are also currently IE compatibility issues.
And here is a hybrid sampling version implemented via SVG. Some more optimizations can be done here if requested.