When I made the choice between smugmug and Phanfare one thing I found I missed was the ability to filter my pictures by year taken.  To my delight, smugmug added this feature shortly after I joined.  The feature is currently hidden and considered beta, but it works quite well - the only bug I've found is it got confused about a picture I stamped as being taken in 1959 (seems they weren’t expecting dates that old... shocker).

If you want a nifty timeline on your smugmug page, here's how to do it:

1. Go to http://yoursmugmugname.smugmug.com/?showGoodies=1 (be sure to adjust the URL for your member name)
   This will take you to your homepage with the phototimeline module visible
2. Click the "show" link
   
3. Very important: click the "date taken" link
   If you don't do this all your pictures in the timeline will be shown by date uploaded (which won't be very interesting unless you've been a smugmug member for multiple years)

That's it, now you have a nifty timeline on your homepage.