Some suggestions:

1) If you are going to suggest such a massive scope of changes, offer to help instead of just dumping a list out there.

2) Check to see if the poster on HN is actually the author of the article. Doesn't look like it in this case, so you may be talking into a vacuum.

3) I love that timeline widget. But it is one of the most un-intuitive and complicated things I have ever seen. I recommend re-coding its functions into a simpler library vs. adding even more complexity to timeline.

4) Dependencies can get evil. Your suggestions add quite a lot of complexity into footprint of plugin. I fear that the end result might look good to a coder, but be a bit of a nightmare to actually use in a production environment.