setWidth was failing for us in FF, even though we had constructed our attempt as entered in the README:
var chart = d3.timeline();
var svg = d3.select("#timeline1").append("svg").attr("width", 500)
.datum(testData).call(chart);
It looks like setWidth does ask for the attribute as entered during initial construction:
width = gParentItem.attr("width");
So we juggled the tests to include that earlier in the chain, throwing the error if no width value is found.
@slattery @rrotaru
nice fix, did you ever get around to submitting a PR?