We recently received a rush of feedback from users that were unable to upload their GEDCOM files to the Pedigree Viewer. As it turns out, a recent change intended to prevent people from uploading files that were not really GEDCOM files was in certain scenarios more effective than we intended. Sorry about that. Thanks to the quick rush of feedback messages describing the problem we were able to quickly correct it. If you’ve had a problem uploading your GEDCOM in the past, try it again. It should be fixed. If you’re still seeing a problem please use the feedback links to let us know.

We haven’t been updating the site or the blog for a while and some of you are starting to wonder what happened to the FamilySearch Labs team. Don’t worry, we are still here working on innovative family history technologies. In fact, we offer the following team photo as evidence that we are still here.

(L to R: Joe ‘running man’ Martel, Jason ‘ice cream’ Butterfield, Grant ‘the rock’ Skousen, Dan ‘just Dan’ Lawyer, Judy ‘mini – as in cooper’ Rice)

A couple of posts ago we spoke of some future enhancements to the pedigree viewer. We still intend to add those enhancements but have decided to shift gears for a while and focus on a different part of the experience. We’re calling this next piece of the puzzle a Life Browser. We hope to have the first version available on the site in the next few weeks.

The Life Browser is intended to provide an experience that makes it easy and interesting to share and explore the lives of our family members. While the genealogical details of our ancestors are essential, they often don’t communicate much about who these people were. Genealogical data provides a basic skeleton of someone’s existence and the Life Browser puts meat on the bones.

The basic approach is to help people tell about their relatives through pictures, records, stories, audio, and video. Our hope is to create an experience that makes people want to explore and learn more about their ancestors. If you’ve had similar ideas or have seen good examples of something like this, leave a comment and let us know about it.

In version 0.3.3 we have added a new mini toolbar (see below) and a clearer indication of multiple spouses.

Bring up the mini toolbar by clicking on a couple. From the mini toolbar you can:

• Expand the couple to see birth, marriage and death information.
• Highlight the couple.
• Horizontally align the family.
• See the ancestors of that couple.
• See the decedents of that couple.
• See any other husbands.
• See any other wives.

We would love to hear what you think – feedback at familysearchlabs dot org.

You’ve probably noticed that each time we update the pedigree viewer we provide a brief description in the blog of what’s changed. We’ve decided to also start listing where we’re going next. Our hope is that others will see where we’re heading and offer their insights or point us to existing implementations or research in similar areas.

The viewer is good at helping people see the forest of ancestors or descendants. It can be awkward however to understand relationships of individual ancestors within the forest. This is partially because the only options are to see all descendants or all ancestors of a person. It would be nice if I could use the viewer to do more exploration. For example, I’d like to go to my 3rd Great Grandpa and see his children in the context of the ancestry chart I’m currently viewing. Then see the children of the 3rd son. Then maybe I’d look at the parents of the wife of the 3rd son. All of this still in the context of the pedigree I’m viewing.

From a feature perspective here is what we’ll be focusing on in the next couple of weeks.

• Allow users to navigate anywhere in their family
• See all descendants of a person without losing context of the forest
• See all ancestors of a person without losing context of the forest
• Show one generation of descendants for a person
• Show one generation of ancestors for a person
• While doing these operations automatically prune away parts of the forest that aren’t needed for context

Here’s what’s new in version 0.3.2

• Enhancements to make it easier for users to maintain context when changing between charts
  • Enhanced transitions between trees
  • Color difference between pedigree and descendancy
  • Added a glow to the couple that currently has the focus
• Changed the option menu to the right mouse button
• Updated the tips & FAQ
• Bug fixes (multiple spouses, transitions, general stability)

This afternoon, we put out a minor update that smooths the transitions between views (trees). What do you think about moving to an ancestry or descendant view?

In version 0.3 we have tried to make it easier to explore and move between different views. In previous versions you could view descendants, but it was hard to get back to the original pedigree.

Left clicking on a couple brings up a menu that allows you to view ancestors or descendants from that point. When you click one of these options, your old view goes into the background as seen below.

You might notice some new arrows now appearing at the bottom of the screen. These arrows allow you to easily move back to the previous view.

Significantly increased GEDCOM loading speed and other performance improvements are also included in this version.

We read every email message we get and also look at the comments on this blog. Please keep the feedback coming, it has been very helpful.

Many of our users have commented about the ability to print from the pedigree viewer. The viewer does have a basic print capability that prints what you see on the screen on an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper. Depending on your needs this basic printout may be sufficient. Several users however, have asked how they might print their whole pedigree in a format that they could read and use.

We don’t intend to start playing with large format printing through our tool. There are however several commercial providers that offer large format printing of family trees. For example, GenerationMaps.com offers a great service for printing out your pedigree in a large format. If you’re looking for a way to print out your whole tree in a usable way, you might give GenerationMaps.com a try. Check them out at www.generationmaps.com.

Version 0.2.2 includes:

• Ability to view all spouses in the menu and switch which spouse is displayed
• Ability to change the beginning node (root node) of a pedigree or decendancy
• Replaced the name list on the left side of the screen with a name search drop down
• Improved tree layout and animations

Thanks for your feedback!

For version 0.2.1 we have made a few changes:

• Popup menus to allow for highlighting, expanding, alignment, and switching between ancestry and descendancy views
• Expand with double click
• New find control
• Bolding of direct line descendants in descendancy view

We are working on support for multiple marriages and several other items. Please keep the feedback coming.