Changing Your Viewpoint with Virtual Pedigree

The Virtual Pedigree is a product of the Brigham Young University Family History Technology Lab.

There is always something really interesting going on in the BYU Family History Technology Lab and they will be talking about all the new developments at the Brigham Young University Family History Technology Workshop on February 7, 2017 at the BYU Conference Center.

BYU Family History Technology Lab has developed some very popular family history programs and apps. The Virtual Pedigree is a way to dynamically expand your view of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and allows you to intuitively navigate your tree without ever loading a new page. It is difficult to describe how the Virtual Pedigree works without actually seeing in in operation. I suggest that you simply log in with your FamilySearch ID and password and try it out. You will either immediately like what you see or need a little more explanation. The key here is that you can expand and move around on the Family Tree by clicking and dragging with your mouse or trackpad. It helps to have a large screen to work with.

At any time, you can click on a name in the Family Tree and see an expanded view of the person.

One very awkward bug in the program is that members of a person's immediate family are listed as "spouses." In the example above, John Bryant was not married to his son John Briant. This bug seems to be pervasive and all you have to do is realize that what is meant is "Members of the Person's Immediate Family" instead of "Spouses." This type of bug highlights the fact that this is a product of a lab and the program is under constant development. This bug also shows up when you view the "Source Box" view of the program.

All of these people obviously did not have the number of husbands and wives shown. When you set a person as a root person, you can see all of that person's descendants.

All in all, except for the bug, it is a very interesting way to explore the Family Tree.