Here is a side by side comparison of the changes we made:

The new design allows you to view and filter to categories with a single click.

The new design makes the toggle between the record view and the category view of your search results more prominent – and it functions with only a single click.

Database titles are now in bold, making it easier to skim through your search results looking for specific records.

If you have specific feedback about the new design – what do you like, what don’t you like – please let us know by taking the survey available at the top of your search results page.

Communicating with matches is even easier. Now when you correspond with a DNA match, there’s a direct link in the email message that lets you quickly locate that match in the future. No more paging through your match list. Just click the link, and it will take you directly to the details for that match.

DNA results on-the-go. We’ve updated our web pages to work seamlessly on your smart phone and tablet. It’s called “responsive design,” and it’s all the rage in the tech world. It means your DNA results will look and fit better when you view them on the smaller screens of a tablet, iPhone, or other handheld device. No app download required; just access your DNA results through your web browser on your smart phone or tablet as usual.

Raw DNA data download. Some of our expert genetic genealogists have requested the ability to download their raw DNA data. It’s the genetic code that’s comprised of over 700,000 A’s, C’s, T’s and G’s that are the basis for your DNA results. And now you have the option to download your raw data by logging into your account, going to your DNA results page and clicking the “manage test settings” link. If you’re not familiar with raw DNA data, be sure to review the “Raw DNA Data” section in our Frequently Asked Questions. It’s highly sensitive and private data that you’ll want to be sure to protect once you’ve downloaded it.

That sums up the latest. But it doesn’t mean we’re done making the DNA experience even better. We continue to listen to feedback from our DNA users and have a growing to-do list: from more powerful tools to search and manage your rapidly growing list of DNA matches to more education on how to use your DNA results. So expect more exciting updates throughout the year.

If you haven’t taken the AncestryDNA test, there’s no better time than now to get started, especially at the new $99 price. Then all the new features and latest scientific findings will be yours. Find out more here: www.ancestrydna.com

Last year, we launched the Interactive Image Viewer as an interactive tool to help you view and interpret information from many of the Census records available online. We’re excited to announce that the Interactive Image Viewer will now be available for several more collections in the coming weeks. Finding and understanding historical records is one of the most exciting and important parts of family history, so we’ve been working hard to make an intuitive and enjoyable experience that will work for different Web browsers and devices. Although we still have work to do, here are a few changes you’ll find:

Becoming a community member is fast, easy and free. We’ve also created a point system to challenge and reward loyal members who actively volunteer their time and knowledge to help others get the most out of their family history research.

To sign up, navigate to Online Help and look for the “Ask the Community” button. Once on the Support Community homepage, look for the Sign Up | Sign In link in the upper right-hand corner of the Community homepage.

Don’t miss a new DNA match—Get the latest with emails updates.

AncestryDNA is always on the look out for new matches. Our database is growing rapidly with new members everyday, which means more DNA matches for you. And our new email notifications will let you know when new matches are added to your list, so you’ll never miss a connection. You choose if and how often you want to receive these emails.

See HOW you’re related to your DNA matches

This groundbreaking feature, only available with AncestryDNA, provides a relationship chart that lets you quickly confirm how a DNA match fits into your family tree. When you and your DNA match have a common ancestor in your family trees, you’ll see exactly how you are related. Also coming soon…just look for the familiar shaky leaf on your DNA results page to lead the way, no more digging into every match to see if there is a hint.

Get updates to your ethnicity results

Our science team is hard at work. A continually growing database and new scientific discoveries mean new findings. Your ethnicity results can update over time, so that you’ll have the latest information available. Always having access to the most up-to-date results, without taking another DNA test, is a big benefit to AncestryDNA. No action required on your part, we’ll do all the work for you.

New research tools to make your search easier

We’re constantly adding more ways for you to quickly and easily navigate your DNA results such as:

Sort and filter your matches by date received, favorites, relationship, and more. Keep notes about your matches. “Favorite” the matches you want to go back to. Remove matches you don’t want to research. And more…

To see all of the latest features and to learn even more about how they can benefit your AncestryDNA experience, just click here.

• Photos: We’ll pull the most recent profile photo from Facebook into your tree. When your cousin Jen updates her Facebook profile photo, it’s automatically updated in your tree.
• Find Long Lost Relatives:We’ll use Facebook to suggest people who might be family members–
   just click to accept. As relatives grow their trees you’ll get even more hints about people to add.
• Birthdays:If your relative includes their birth date in Facebook, we’ll grab it for you and insert it into your tree.
• Quick Contact: Remember that cool photo of Grandma that your uncle has hanging on his wall? When he is added to your family tree from Facebook you have instant access to his Facebook profile right from your tree. Just click through and send him a message on Facebook asking for a copy of that cool photo.
• Simple Sourcing: When we pull data from Facebook, we’ll create Source citations so you know where the data came from.

Getting started is easy, here is how it is done:

Step 1: In your family tree, hover the mouse over a living person, then click her or her name to go to the person’s profile page.

Step 2: Now click the “Facebook” link. Follow the prompts to authorize the Ancestry Facebook Application.

Step 3: You will be asked if Ancestry.com has correctly matched you in your tree with you on Facebook. Click the green “Match” button if it is correct, or click the “Not you?” link if this is incorrect.

Step 4: Now the app will compare your tree with your connections in Facebook. When there are matches, you can accept or reject them. To accept a suggested match click on the “Match” button, to reject a potential match click on the “Not a match” link.

Step 5: After going through this list you will see your tree with a list of all the people that may be related to you on the left side. If they are related to you, click the “+Add” button and follow the prompts to add them to the proper spot in your tree.

Step 6: When you are finished adding relatives to your tree, click the “I’m Finished” button at the bottom of the tree.

Here are some answers to questions you might have about this new feature.

Facebook is all about living people, why would I put living people in my family tree?

Let’s start off with a common family history scenario and a bit of simple math. Let’s say that I am doing research on my great-great grandmother who had three children. Let’s further assume that each of successive generation in turn had three children. By the time I come along there will be 81 descendants of this great-great grandmother. Surviving photographs, journals, vital records, and stories about her will likely be spread among this group of 81 descendants. As I am able to connect with more and more of these individuals, the odds of great family history discoveries about my great-great grandmother increase. For this reason we at Ancestry have long believed that a strong network of living relatives is key to opening the possibilities of family history. Facebook represents just such a network of living individuals.

Facebook is all about “friends.” What do my friends have to do with my family tree?

While much of the focus of Facebook is on “friend” relationships, our research has shown that the average Facebook user has created “friend” connections with more than 20 relatives. In addition, Facebook now enables users to designate relatives as well as describe how an individual person is related (example: Jane Smith is my mother). This information really excited us and started us on the path of figuring out how we could empower Ancestry members to tap into this rich network of family relationships available on Facebook.

Why should I use Facebook to build this living network instead of doing it by hand?

Building out a living network of relatives by hand certainly is an option. With the latest release, however, Ancestry members can now take advantage of their Facebook network to add information and new people to family trees. It’s quick and easy – forget manually typing names or selecting a gender – let us do that for you. A couple of clicks and a new person is added to your tree.

I’ve already added living relatives to my Ancestry family tree, is this new Facebook feature useful for me?

Yes, in addition to adding new people to a tree, this feature can be used to add Facebook information to existing individuals. All of the benefits described at the beginning of this post apply to existing individuals. Of note, when information is added from Facebook, it will never replace what you have added to your tree already. For example, if you already have a birth date and photo for your brother, this info will not be replaced with Facebook profile information.

I’m concerned about privacy of my personal information on both Facebook and Ancestry. How is privacy treated?

Rest assured that the rules regarding living persons are not impacted in any way when you add Facebook information to a person within your tree. For example, a private tree remains private when Facebook information is added and all our existing privacy rules apply. Only those with permission to view living persons in the tree will see any information that has been added from Facebook.

We respect Facebook profile settings and will only access the information from your Facebook account that you have expressly given us permission to access.  We also won’t post anything to your Facebook wall or contact any of your Facebook friends unless you ask us.  When you add Facebook information to your tree, you must explicitly grant Ancestry.com permission to retain and use that information in accordance with the Ancestry.com Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement.

What about those of us who don’t have a Facebook account or are not interested in this feature?

This feature is completely optional. We understand that not all Ancestry members have interest in connecting people in their family trees to information from Facebook. As such we are not requiring members to utilize this feature if they feel it is not to their own benefit. If you do not use the feature, your tree data will not be impacted in any way.

Can I remove Facebook information for a person in my tree? 

Absolutely.  At any time you can disconnect a person from their Facebook account.  Simply go to the person’s profile page, click the arrow next to the “Facebook profile” link, and select Disconnect.  The change takes place immediately.

Watch this video on how to use the new Facebook feature:

1890 U.S. Population Density

For those of us who use census records as the beginning steps for sketching out the structure of our families, that gap between 1880 and 1900 seems huge and, sometimes, insurmountable.  A lot can happen in twenty years.

There are plenty of other records available that can help you trace your family through the end of the 19th century.  Here are a few of my favorite.

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State Census Records

Many states took censuses on “off” years from the federal government, most commonly on the “fives.”  Using the Card Catalog, do a title search for “State Census” and see what comes up.  To solve the 1880-1900 gap challenge, look specifically for censuses taken in 1885 or 1895.  As of now we have the following censuses for that time period online at Ancestry.com:

• Colorado (1885)
• Florida (1885)
• Iowa (1885, 1895)
• Kansas (1885, 1895)
• Michigan (1884, 1894)
• Minnesota (1885, 1895)
• Nebraska (1885)
• New Jersey (1895)
• New York (1892)
• South Dakota (1895)

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City Directories

While these will likely only list the adults in the household (and sometimes only the head of household), city directories are a great resource for tracking your family through the 1880s and 90s.  Using the Card Catalog, filter to directories, then state, then decade to see what is available.  Once you find a person you are looking for, try a surname search on the same street to see who else shows up in the same neighborhood or place of employment.

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Newspapers

Newspapers are another great way to track your family, especially if they came from a smaller community where local happenings were big news.  Be sure to check out the large newspaper collection on Ancestry.com – again, using the Card Catalog, filter to Newspapers, then state, then decade to see what shows up in the same time and place as your family.

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If you want a quick video tutorial about searching the state censuses and the city directories, watch my Ancestry LIVE broadcast from earlier today.

Until next time – Have fun climbing your family tree…

You may have noticed that we now have a link entitled Privacy (rather than just Privacy Statement) at the bottom of our Ancestry.com site. It now includes our new Privacy Philosophy, along with links to our official Privacy Statement (updated) and the comprehensive Privacy Center.

Note: The new Philosophy is not replacing our official Privacy Statement. We wanted to put everything about privacy in one place for you, in what we hope is in a digestible and transparent form.

This isn’t just about updating our privacy language to make it more comprehendible (though we are pretty sure it will help you have a better understanding of Ancestry.com’s approach to privacy). Our purpose in adding our Privacy Philosophy and spending time to develop our Privacy Center, is to help you feel more comfortable with what’s available on the site and be rest assured that your content and information you share about yourself and your family on Ancestry.com is protected.

The Privacy Center has a lot of helpful information around privacy related topics all in one place to make it easy for you to find answers to your questions.

For example, the explanations dive into how you can control what other people see about you. It’s also about continuing to educate you on the privacy options available on the site, so you can decide which levels you feel comfortable with.

If you haven’t had a chance, take some time to visit our updated Privacy Center.

Plus, help us continue to improve the page and how we communicate our privacy by letting us know what you think. Use the “Send us feedback” link on the right side of the Privacy Center to provide us with your thoughts.

If you aren’t already using the new viewer, you can get to by clicking the Options button in the green toolbar above the image. You can switch back to a different viewer the same way.

The updated viewer includes

• Print the Current View
• Better keyboard support for zoom and panning
• Better support for Newspapers and similar collections
• Improved performance

Print the Current View

You can now print the current view of the image. This is the most-often requested print feature that we had in the previous Advanced Image Viewer. Position the image in the viewer (zoom in or out, move the image where you want it), click the Print button, and then select the Print the current view option. A preview window will appear and the Print dialog should open. (We generally recommend printing in Landscape; you can select that in the printer properties).

Better keyboard support for zoom and panning

The previous version did not have full keyboard support for zooming and panning on all of the browsers. We believe this is corrected. The + and – keys on both the keyboard and keypad now work for zooming in or out. Arrow keys, as well as Page Up and Page Down keys, are supported for panning. Home will take you to the left side of the image; End will take you to the right side of the image.

Better support for newspapers and similar collections

We have improved our support for newspapers and similar collections (those that are processed with Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, technology). The viewer will now highlight the search terms and center the current hit within the viewer. Additionally, the Next Hit button should work.

Improved performance

We continue to work on performance issues to make the new viewer (and the underlying services which support it) faster and more responsive. There are still steps to take, but we hope you find that the experience continues to improve over time.

Other miscellaneous improvements

There are other improvements you may notice as you work with the new viewer. Images should now load to the “Fit Width” zoom level by default. The viewer now remembers your zoom settings as you move between images in a collection so you don’t have to reset it as you browse between images during the current session. And we prevent the new viewer from showing up on iOS devices (such as the iPad).

The Standard Viewer Remains Available

The Standard Viewer remains available. The Standard Viewer doesn’t have all of the same advanced features, but it does work on all browsers and operating systems (including iPads).

Regards,

Jim Mosher

[Updated on 8 August 2012]

Today, we are pleased to announce that a new (beta) image viewer is available on the site. This new viewer should be useable by the majority of our customers while still providing the “advanced” capabilities of the previous viewer.

We have written this experience in a way that will make it easier and faster for us to support the most popular viewer technologies. For the present, this is Adobe Flash; in the future, we anticipate this will evolve towards technologies such as HTML 5 as browsers that support those technologies are more broadly adopted by our users.

Summary of key features

• Faster image loading. We’ve invested in the backend services that power the image viewing experience. We’ll continue to optimize and improve performance, but this experience should be faster for most of our users.
• Works on more platforms and with more browsers. Windows and Macintosh. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
• New and improved features. Rotate, mirror, and better zoom controls are new for all users. Magnify, thumbnail view, and enhanced images are new for anyone who couldn’t use the previous Advanced Image Viewer.
• Familiar interface. The basic user interface around the viewer is relatively unchanged. Some of the interactions have changed (such as zoom and pan controls).
• Simplified installation experience. For most of you, the viewer will just work. Some of you will first need to install a more recent version of Adobe Flash.
• BETA. We’re still working on this. There are some known issues. We’re also taking feedback for further improvements. Let us know what you think at feedback-imageviewer@ancestry.com.

What this means to you

Some of you will start seeing the new viewer immediately. Everyone can choose enable the new viewer. If you don’t like the new viewer, you can go back to using the old viewer. Over time, we will be directing more and more people to the new viewer.

To switch to the new viewer (or switch back to the old viewer), click the Options button and then click on the viewer you wish to use. (Your options may be different than what is shown below, based on your browser and operating system.)

What’s new

The new viewer, and the backend services we’ve built out to support it, is faster, feature rich, and easier to install. It retains the general capabilities of the previous Advanced Image Viewer and adds some new features that our customers have requested. It runs on both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. It is supported on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. And it is available now.

When you first look at the new viewer, you may not notice many changes from the previous Advanced Image Viewer. If you are used to the Standard Image Viewer, there will be some new features to try out. Regardless, we have tried to keep the user experience very similar. There are a few changes that we’d like to point out:

What’s Changed. We’ve added a link that describes what has changed and takes you to a survey so you can provide us with feedback on the new viewer. Let us know what you think!

Rotate and Mirror. Two new features are available on the toolbar. Rotating an image 90 degrees at a time or mirroring it (flipping it over) can make reading some images easier.

Zoom drop down. We have updated the options in the zoom drop down: Fit Image, Fit Width, Fit Height, and Full Size give you broad control over the initial size of the image. Additionally, we have removed the percentage-based zoom options.

Zoom controls. The Zoom in/Zoom out buttons remain to help you zoom in or out on an image. We have also added support for zooming in and out using the scroll wheel on your mouse or using the plus (+) and minus (-) keys on your number keypad.

Image Manipulation. Use the mouse to click and drag an image around on the screen. Alternately, use the arrow keys to move the image. Please note that there are no scroll bars within the viewer.

What else has changed

Other changes may be more subtle. You will notice that images load to the “Fit Width” zoom value. Images start out a little fuzzy and then clarify – this is due to the “Deep Zoom” technology we are using to optimize download speeds (we don’t download the entire image all at once, which make the image faster to load). The Magnify option actually magnifies a bit more than the previous version.

Printing & Saving

We had to make some changes to the Print and Save Image features. This version doesn’t support a “Print Current View,” which the previous Advanced Image Viewer did. “Print Current View” should be available before the end of the year. Saving an image is also different. If you have been using Chrome or Firefox, saving was a right-click operation. You will now need to click the Save button and select “Save this image.” The file will then be downloaded by the browser.

Known issues

Yes, this is a Beta release. Yes, there are things that aren’t quite the way we want them to be. And, yes, we want your feedback so we can continue to improve.

For this release, there are a few known issues:

• Zooming in and out using the “+” and “-” key on the top of your keyboard doesn’t work. It should work with the “+” and “-” on the numeric keypad. Except that…
• Zooming out using the “-” key doesn’t work with Chrome, and…
• Scrolling the image using the arrow keys doesn’t work with Safari.
• The popup that displays when you first load the new viewer is currently English only.
• If you resize your browser window , or have the Member Connect/Source panel open, some of the toolbar options may wrap on the screen.
• While we highlight terms in our OCR collections (such as newspapers), this version doesn’t move and center the image on the current highlight.
• There are a few odd cases where canceling the install of Adobe Flash on older browsers can cause the browser to crash.

With the exception of the Adobe Flash issue, we plan on fixing all of the other items. You won’t need to do a new download or make any changes – they should just start working as we roll out the updates.

Faster image loading. New and improved features. A familiar interface. A new viewer.

We hope you will try it out. Let us know what you think. Click on the “What’s Changed” link in the viewer to learn more and to take a survey. Or send a message to us at feedback-imageviewer@ancestry.com. If you like it, we want to know. If you don’t like it, we want to know. And if you have problems with it – especially if images don’t load correctly – we want to know (please let us know which collection you were viewing).

We look forward to your feedback!

Best regards,

Jim Mosher
Search Product Management