We’ve been busy adding new features, refining existing features, and analyzing your feedback. You’ve made some great suggestions and found some bugs. Thank you! There were a couple of themes in the feedback: 1) people want to be able to sign out 2) people are frustrated by how broken the tree navigation is if you wander beyond the default 4-generations. We plan to work on both of these after we finish some work on the person page.

Here is what’s new in the 2nd whack at the Family Tree:

1. Event Map : We’ve added an event map to the person page. Take a look and let us know how we might make it better.

2. Date and Place in Summary: Now you can see both date and place information for events in summary fields.

3. Family Relationships: Even though we’ve updated this feature on the person page, we have much bigger plans in the future. Currently it is more an exercise at getting the data into the application.

We’ve also fixed a couple of bugs reported through feedback. Thanks for sending your comments. Keep them coming, they really help.

FamilySearch is continuing to enhance and update Record Search. This latest release continues to provide quick and easy access to find information on your ancestors. Below are the highlights and changes to this release.

• Search with Events: In previous releases you were able to search on “All Events”. To better scope results that patrons are looking for, you can now search on specific events (birth, marriage, and death). The results when searching on these specific events significantly improve the ranking of results – you are now able to more quickly select correct ancestors. “All Events” has now been changed to “Any Event” and provides the same functionality.
• Search Results Layout: Results are more detailed with specific information relating to the individual featured more prominently – birth, death, and relationships are more evident. Scanning and comparing for selecting the correct ancestor is quicker and easier.
• Filtering: Several new filters are now available allowing you to quickly narrow the results set to select your ancestor. These include Role, Birth Date and Place, Death Date and Place, Marriage Date and Place, Record Type (formerly Collection Type), and Image.
• Individual Collections: These collections allow you to browse down to specific research. Key features that have been added to enhance that experience include:
  • Separate Search and Browse Views: Rather than providing a single list of individual collections with icons denoting the features of each collection there are now two lists – search and browse. Search provides the ability to scope a search to an individual collection where browse provides the ability to view images of historical records.
  • Browse interface: When you browse collections, you can now navigate different levels of documents. The interface provides levels of hierarchy with guides and information as you navigate through the collection.
  • Collection Status: Collections show their last update. For collections that are being added, an “Early Access” status is displayed. This provides a gauge of how complete the collection is and a status as to when it was last updated.
  • New or Updated Status: On the Home Page any collection that is new or was updated in the last 30 days, is denoted by a red asterisk. You can use this to easily determine what is new or has been updated since your last visit to Record Search.
• Registration and Activation: Users new to Record Search can quickly request access by completing the registration form. This form requires and validates the users email address. The user is then sent a response within 24 hours with their activation key. This key is good for 7 days and once used provides access to Record Search using the validated email address.
• Search tips on the Home Page: To help improve your search experience we have included several tips next to the search fields.
• Updated Look and Feel: We have refreshed and updated the entire site. Let us know what you think through FEEDBACK.

We’re excited to make our first whack at the FamilySearch Family Tree available on FamilySearch Labs. We’ve taken what we learned from the Pedigree Viewer and the Life Browser and started hooking them together running against the new FamilySearch system.

For the more technically inclined, we’re using our recently released FamilySearch API front ended by a flash application to deliver a web 2.0-style experience with family history. For the less technically oriented, we’re experimenting with a cool new way for you to interact with the new FamilySearch.

What to expect from our first whack

1. You MUST have an account with the new FamilySearch to be able to access this prototype. For those of you that don’t have an account, sorry. We’ll put some screen shots below so you can see what it looks like but you’ll have to wait until we have a demo account available or until you are able to register on the new FamilySearch to be able to use the prototype.
2. After you login to the application it will load your pedigree. This is the information you will see if you were to login to the new FamilySearch. Currently we are only displaying four generations in these views. You can still click on people and choose to see their descendants or ancestors to get to other parts of your tree. There is also an alpha list.
3. Double-clicking a person or clicking View All Details will take you to that person’s page. The person page is honestly kind of ugly right now just shows some basic data about the person.
4. As always, please use the feedback link and share your thoughts.

Sample screens from the prototype

Family Tree Login Screen

Family Tree Pedigree Screen

Family Tree Descendancy Screen

Family Tree Person Page

We have just put up an update to Standard Finder in labs. The update has the following two fixes (that were reported by replying patrons – thanks!!):

 - If you enter a place that does not exist currently in our catalog we would generate an error. Now we will be much more friendly and just tell you we could not find anything.

- When you looked at variations there was not a separation between the first and second value. Now we have corrected that and put a comma between the two.

 Thanks for your replies. Keep them coming. Other items, such as catalog updates are in the works, but they generally will take longer before they are back into the system.

 Thanks,

Ron

We have an immediate need for a few talented and passionate web UI developers to join the FamilySearch team. Flash/Flex experience is a plus. Here’s why you want us.

1. You can help build a cutting-edge application that will be used by millions.
2. The cause of family history is truly meaningful and noble. You can do something deeply fulfilling and still get great benefits and compensation.
3. You can work in a family-oriented environment that shares your values.

Send your resume or inquiries to feedback at familysearchlabs dot org.

Thanks to you we have had great success on the Research Wiki. Many people have joined our community. In an effort to keep you up to date, we thought we’d post some of our wiki plans to the blog.

Today (Dec 3, 2007) we posted on our site our plans for the next steps. The FamilySearch Research Wiki is intended to become a general resource available to everyone who comes to FamilySearch.org. In order to scale to that size we need to switch to a different underlying system for the wiki. We are making the switch this week. We will leave the current site and its content live, but no one will be able to edit it or add content. At the same time, we will bring the new software up in a test mode, inviting an increasingly larger group of people until we are sure it will serve everyone. At that point we will close down the current Research Wiki site and switch to the new one which will be open to everyone. Keep watching the FamilySearch Labs blog to keep up to date on our progress.