This maintenance will support the continued growth in Ancestry Member Trees traffic.

This tree service downtime will affect Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of My Canvas, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com that are related to Member Trees. Other than that, all other areas of the site will remain functional.

For the vast majority of our members living outside Mountain Daylight Time, Tuesday, October 13 11:00pm through 11:30pm MDT is the same as…

In London: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 6:00 AM – 6:30 AM
In Melbourne: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
In San Francisco: Tuesday, 13 October 2009 at 10:00 PM – 10:30 PM
In New York: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 1:00 AM – 1:30 AM
In Moscow: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM – 9:30 AM
In Paris: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 7:00 AM – 7:30 AM

The current pedigree view shows up to five generations of ancestors at a time.  In “preview mode” you can now expand a family line to view dozens of generations at one time on your screen.  New zoom in/out tools allow you to customize the size of the names on screen to see more names at a time, or to make the text larger for easier readability.

Speaking of readability, we’ve sharpened the contrast and increased the text’s size and boldness to make names easier to read at any zoom level.

In addition, a “full screen” toggle button allows you to expand the tree viewer to take full advantage of any extra space your computer monitor is able to display.

In preview mode, you can grab and drag your family tree across the screen to adjust it to just how you want to see it, which can be especially helpful when looking at 16 generations of your paternal line at full screen.

We’ve also made it easier to navigate to your ancestors’ profile pages.  Instead of hovering and clicking “view profile”, now a profile icon appears next to each person in your tree–just click it and done.

Also, we’re introducing to the pedigree view a mini “more info” card for each person in your tree.  Clicking a name now brings up more information for that person, plus links to go to the profile page, view hints, edit, search, move to focus, and add family members.  This “more info” card also has an option to view the spouse and children of the person in your pedigree view, without having to leave the page.

To try out the preview mode, visit your family tree and click the link “Check out a preview of the new pedigree view”.

We expect the preview to last several weeks before we make the new pedigree view the default experience.  We invite you to use it, and send us your opinions via the feedback tool on the page.  We will work to incorporate as much of your feedback as we can before we launch.

In early June, we launched a preview of these enhancements to the family tree.   Our goal was to help you become familiar with the changes before they were incorporated on the site, as well as give us your opinion of the new design.  We received over 8,000 responses, the large majority of them very much excited to see the preview features implemented. We are very grateful for the time and care you put in to providing such insightful feedback, and made several changes to the preview as a direct result of your feedback.

Since the new look launched (yesterday morning) we have received nearly 4,000 feedback responses.  We’re taking notes and making plans for additional improvements as people get used to the new look and we learn better how to optimize it.  We encourage you to continue sending us your feedback through the feedback link in your family tree.

To learn more about the improvements we’ve made, you can visit our earlier blog post announcing the preview as well as our welcome page which gives a quick overview.

This maintenance will support upcoming features for Ancestry Member Trees and Family Tree Maker.

This tree service downtime will affect Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of My Canvas, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com 2.0 that are related to Member Trees. Other than that, all other areas of the site will remain functional.

For the vast majority of our members living outside Mountain Daylight Time, 1:00 – 2:00 AM MDT is the same as…

Coordinated Universal Time: 07:00 – 08:00 AM
In London: 8:00 – 9:00 AM
In Melbourne: 5:00 – 6:00 PM
In San Francisco: midnight – 1:00 AM
In New York: 3:00 – 4:00 AM
In Moscow: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
In Rome: 9:00 – 10:00 AM
In Tokyo: 4:00 – 5:00 PM

The family tree pages will load faster and we’ve introduced some key navigation improvements to help you find what you’re looking for quickly and navigate your tree with fewer clicks. We’ve updated the Ancestor Profile Page and the tree navigation, and added a new “click card” feature. Enhancements to the pedigree view also will be coming soon.

HOW TO ACCESS THE PREVIEW
To access the preview, navigate to any person in your family tree and select the link at the top of the person page “Check out the new look of family trees and give us your feedback.”

 The preview link is also available from the pedigree view page.

HOW TO EXIT THE PREVIEW
To return to the current family tree look, click the “exit the family tree preview” link at the top of any page in the preview.

Also in this same area you’ll find links to learn more about the changes, and a tool to send us your thoughts on the updates (which we welcome!).

WHAT ARE THE ENHANCEMENTS?

Ancestor Profile Page
We’ve changed the look and navigation of the profile page to make it easier to use and to help you keep your information organized. Tabs across the top of the page make it easier to access sources, photos, stories, comments, hints and more. General information about the person you are viewing will remain consistent at the top of the page making is easier to always know exactly where you are.

Show me the sources
The new “Facts & Sources” tab makes it easy to see what facts and events a person has, and what evidence supports those facts.

 Family is always a click away
We’ve made the “Show immediate family” link available on most pages so you can always put the person you’re viewing in context of his or her immediate family members.

 Photos, front and center
You spoke up, we listened. You let us know that you prefer photos above the timeline. That’s where they are now — back on top. In addition to showing photos, the media gallery shows all of the media items you’ve added.

Built for speed
We’ve completely rebuilt many pages from the ground up. It’s faster than ever to load and navigate around your tree. So this is more than simply a new color & layout change—moving to this new design helped us achieve substantial improvements in performance. The new design has major technical improvements (requiring 65% fewer object requests, and 90% fewer server requests), so your pages will load faster than ever. In addition we’re loading the most important parts of pages first, so you can get on with your research sooner.

New Navigation Shortcuts
The new tree navigation is designed to make it both easier and faster to access key tools for your family tree.

What’s different?
When you first visit your tree you’ll now see your pedigree view first, rather than the “overview” tab with your recent updates. Instead, you’ll find those updates in the “Recent Activity” tab, and your photos, audio, and video in the “Media Gallery” tab.

Tree Shortcuts
The new tree navigation offers convenient shortcuts. (Click the arrow next to the tree name opens a drop down menu.) This gives fast access to:

• view the family tree
• view tree settings
• tree privacy
• invite family members
• view recent activity
• view all the photos and stories you’ve added in the tree “media gallery.”

In addition, the new tree navigation has persistent links to the home person, the list of all people, and a quick search box which lets you type in a name to quickly navigate to a person.

Profile Shortcuts
A new navigation feature we think will be especially helpful on the profile page is a “click card” link next to the names of each family member. Clicking this icon will bring up a quick overview of the person’s information along with fast access to:

• view profile page
• view Ancestry Hints
• quick edit
• search for records on Ancestry.com
• view family tree
• and add a relative
• view immediate family members

When you click this link, you’ll see this card:

Coming Soon: Enhancements to the Pedigree View
Next up in our preview of tree updates will be a new version of the pedigree view that will let you see more generations at one time, see your tree full screen, drag and grab your tree, and zoom in and out. Improved navigation tools will make it faster and easier to return to an ancestor profile page.

 Look for more information on the new pedigree view coming soon!

FAQ

What’s a “preview”?
A “Preview” enables members to see upcoming enhancements in their own family trees with their own family data. Many members appreciate (and have requested) a chance to learn more about and comment on significant changes before they are finalized. The preview model provides an opportunity to do that.

Why are you making these changes?
We’ve approached these changes with a great deal of caution—why mess up a good thing? We have two key reasons for these changes—first we’ve studied how members use the family tree product and found several areas where the current design hampers navigation and requires too many clicks. 

The new navigation model will make it easier to move to different people in your tree, with fewer clicks, and easier to review the information and sources you have for each person. To minimize the amount of change, we’ve done our best to add these key navigation improvements in the most low-impact way possible.

The second key reason for the change is to improve site performance. The ancestor profile page has become the single-most viewed page on Ancestry.com. Improving its performance will minimize wait times so you can focus on getting your research done.

How do you know this is better?
Our confidence comes primarily from working with members and watching how they do their family history work. We visit members in their homes to observe how they work, we invite members to our office to see our new design ideas and try them out, and we get a lot of suggestions online and by email. We’re launching this as a ‘preview’ to make sure everybody gets a chance to see what we’re changing and give feedback. The feedback tool sends each message straight to the team responsible for these changes to the tree system. We will be reading and considering each feedback item we receive. If you find things that don’t work as well for you as you’d like, please let us know.

How do I give feedback on the preview?
To access the feedback tool, click the link in the preview banner “Give us feedback about the new design”.  The feedback tool has four general categories for feedback: General feedback, Share an idea, Report a problem, and Give praise.

How long will the preview be?
We expect the preview will run for 3 or 4 weeks while we continue to refine it, fix bugs that come up, and implement your suggestions. When the preview ends, it will replace the current experience.

This maintenance will support the continued growth in Ancestry Member Trees traffic.

This tree service downtime will affect Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of My Canvas, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com 2.0 that are related to Member Trees. Other than that, all other areas of the site will remain functional.

For the vast majority of our members living outside Mountain Daylight Time, 1:00 – 3:00 AM MDT is the same as…

Coordinated Universal Time: 07:00 – 09:00 AM
In London: 8:00 – 10:00 AM
In Melbourne: 5:00 – 7:00 PM
In San Francisco: midnight – 2:00 AM
In New York: 3:00 – 5:00 AM
In Moscow: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
In Rome: 9:00 – 11:00 AM
In Tokyo: 4:00 – 6:00 PM

This tree service downtime will affect Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of My Canvas, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com 2.0 that are related to Member Trees.  Other than that, other areas of the site will remain functional.

Have you ever wondered who keeps the service running for you?  Here’s a list of the key players tonight and their roles:

- Pause agents (Steve B. will have these paused by 1am)
- Turn off replication (Kelland)
- Take Tree Service offline (Greg)
- Switch database to read-only (Kelland)
- Backup/Restore all transaction logs (Kelland)
- Take all Tree Service web servers out of the vip except one (Becca)
- Change Web.Config settings — including TreeDB1 (Greg & Becca)
- Bring TreeDB1 online (Kelland)
- Test (Chuck)
- Service Broker check / CLR Stored Proc
- Bring Tree Service online (Greg)
- Start agents (Steve B.)
- SQL Jobs (Kelland & Greg)
- Setup Replication (Kelland)

While these folks don’t expect any special thanks for keeping our wonderful trees system running, I am personally glad that they do it. Thanks, Team.

We apologize for this downtime, but hope you take comfort knowing it should result in better performance for the more than 13 million photos you and other members have submitted.

This tree service downtime will affect Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of Ancestry Press, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com 2.0 that are related to Member Trees.

How do I use it?
We’ve updated the family tree so that just about anywhere we show a place, you can click on that place and see the link on the map.  When we display the map we’ll also show all the events for the person.  It’s been fun for me to start visualizing these places in my tree that I’ve been staring at for so many years.  The map let you see the streets and roads, or select an aerial view to get satellite images.

We’ve worked hard to make this easy to use, but for any who want a fun tutorial, we’ve created a pretty great tutorial that walks you through all the map’s features. Just click the question mark in the green circle at the top right hand corner of the screen.

In addition to viewing the important places in your family members’ lives, you can also find places to help you in your research efforts.  We have links to show local cemeteries and courthouses, and “Other Places” link displays a list of additional display options where you can find historical information—churches, historical sites, libraries and archives, and government buildings.

If the locations in your tree aren’t found by our mapping tool, we’ll help suggest possible matching locations to display. If you have no location entered for some of your events, the map feature allows you to enter in location information which will then be stored to your tree.

Got Suggestions or Feedback?
We have lots of plans for the future on how to make this feature even better than it is.  Your feedback is a crucial part of the improvement process; please let us know what you think of the map feature and what improvements you would like to see.  Add a comment or send me an email (kfreestone at tgn.com).

Bugs we’re working on

1. A pop up will randomly flash when clicking between the pins and the side panel.
2. If a group is open and you want to click a single pin that’s not in the group (appears grayed out), you have to mouse over the side bar to close the group before the single pin is clickable. This only happens if you want to click on the pin rather than on event in the list.
3. Most of the point-of-interest data (cemeteries, courthouses etc.) shows up in the U.S., Canada, and to a lesser extent European countries. We are working on acquiring more relevant and accurate point-of-interest data.

What is it?
It’s called the “Ancestry Toolbar”.  It’s a toolbar you can install and add to your browser (If you use IE or Firefox), adding an instant connection to Ancestry and your family tree from where ever you wander in the great wide web.

Here’s a picture:

What does it do?
Primarily the Ancestry Toolbar lets you save photos and stories you find on the web to a person in your tree.  It creates a link pointing back to the website you found the image, which acts as a sort of source citation for the photo or story.

Here’s a quick recap of the features of the toolbar:

•    Save Photos and Stories and attach them to people in your family tree
•    Save links to web pages to people in your family tree
•    Access your Ancestry Quick Links
•    Quickly access your family tree(s)
•    Google Search tool (for both Ancestry and the web)

How does it work?
Well, lets suppose you’re out on the web looking for something about Franklin Van Valkenburgh.  You may find a page with some photos you’d like to add to your tree, or a story.

.

Just click the “Save…” button on the Ancestry Toolbar to launch the toolbar’s features.

Then choose to quickly save a link to the page, or instead to select photos or text to save.

If you choose to save pictures and text, the toolbar will let you click on the pictures or text items to select which ones you want added to your tree.  Now, remember: only items in the public domain should be selected–you’ve got to be judicious about what you save, just like you would be about what you upload.  Fortunately there is a wealth of information in the public domain that you can save and attach to your tree.

After selecting the items you like, click on the orange “Save selected items” button (top right) and the toolbar will guide you through choosing which person to attach the items to.

A link is preserved
For the photos, stories, and web pages you save to your tree, a link back to the original is always preserved–so you and others can always click through to see the item in its original context.

Ready to try it?
Download the toolbar now and check it out!

Comments or Feedback?
We’d love to have your comments on this blog, or also please feel free to email me directly (kfreestone at tgn.com).