Dramatic Changes to the FamilySearch Family Tree

This post is taking me some time to write. I have been working on researching names in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and now I have to spend some time thinking about the program rather than research.

If you have worked on your portion of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree in the past few days, you have seen the almost complete makeover of the Individual Detail Pages. Visually, the pages look similar but when you start to work with them, you begin to see a whole list of both small and large changes to the arrangement and operation of the web pages.

The most obvious change is that the various sections are now shown as menu items across the top of the page rather than having each section listed vertically down from the top to the bottom of the page. There is a new section for a Timeline and one called Collaborate that contains the previous Notes and Discussions. The effect of this rearrangement is that when you go to look at your Sources, for example, you have to check back to another page to see the detail information about your ancestor because now the information is on two different pages. I am not quite sure yet how to handle this especially with my long-standing difficulty in remembering dates for more than a millisecond.

Some of the changes are not quite so obvious. The Edit option has been moved over next to the entries and the number of sources for each entry is also prominently available. This makes the idea of sources more prominent and also associates that with the idea of editing the information. The Edit option is now visible for each of the different entries in the "Vitals" Section.

Changing the menu from two layers down to one is an improvement. There is still some confusion about the Tree link that takes you to the main view of the Family Tree and the "View Tree" link that shows you the particular person you are viewing in the center of the Family Tree.

The Timeline is a nice addition and you can also add a map function.

The right sidebar has some new choices.

The Tools menu adds a Merge By Id option and a "Delete Person Unavailable." I am guessing that means that the person cannot be deleted.

The main difficulty I see is the fact that you cannot view both sources and record on the Family Tree at the same time.

I am getting some feedback about the new interface, but as usual, mostly from those who are unhappy with the changes. I am so used to programs changing after more than 40+ years of working with computers that I don't see the changes as a problem. Some seem to think that FamilySearch should have announced that a change was taking place, but I have been watching BETA.FamilySearch.org and have been well aware of the changes for some time. Websites like The Family History Guide will be affected but I am advised that The Family History Guide has the changes well in hand.