AUTHORED BY LAURA DANSBURY (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

In January, we began testing a new version of our image viewer to improve consistency and reliability for many different types of browsers, with a cleaner look and interactive features. It is a Flash based experience that provides tools to help you get the most out of census documents.  There are many new features but some of the most noticeable ones are the yellow and green highlights  over the person you are searching for and his or her household.  The viewer also offers brief narratives to explain the data in each column, deep zoom, and a transcribed name column on the left side of the image.

Thousands of members tried it out and sent us feedback and suggestions. Thank you very much!

Based on your feedback, we updated the viewer, added new features, and fixed some bugs too.  As of today, the interactive image viewer has become the primary viewer for the now completed 1911 UK Census.

What if you don’t have Flash installed?

The older viewers are still available.  If you try to view an image in the interactive viewer and you don’t have Flash, your previous default viewer will be offered instead.  If you are viewing images on a non-Flash enabled device such as an iPad, the non-Flash viewer will be automatically substituted.

Can you manually switch to a different viewer?

Yes, you can.   There is a link to switch to your previous default viewer located in the options menu under the actions button. If you previously turned off the interactive image viewer, you can turn it back on by clicking the Interactive Image link that appears in the upper right side of advanced image viewer.  Example below:

How can you send feedback?

Please use the “Send comments” link at the top of the viewer.

Thank you for your input and suggestions on the beta version of the interactive image viewer.  The feedback helped us improve the viewer.  We will continue to read your feedback and use it to improve Ancestry.co.uk. Start searching the 1911 census now with the new interactive image viewer:

• 1911 Channel Islands Census: http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2355
• 1911 Wales Census: http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2353
• 1911 Isle of Man Census: http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2354
• 1911 England Census: http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2352

We’re broadcasting six presentations live from the world’s biggest genealogy show at London Olympia, to our Facebook fan page.

We’d love you to join us at www.facebook.com/AncestryUK so if you’re Facebook fan then log in now. 

For full details on the presentations go to our recent blog post here.

AUTHORED BY LAURA DANSBURY (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

Record images are the foundation of your family history, and we want to create a rich viewing experience that will bring these historical documents to life. The new Interactive Image Viewer (currently in beta) includes interactive tools to help you view and interpret the information on the record as well as navigation controls that make it easy to focus on the part of the image you’re interested in. The Interactive Image Viewer is a work in progress; we are still adding new features and functionality. We value your suggestions for improving the viewer.

Where can you try it out?

This beta viewer is available for the following censuses:

• 1911 Channel Islands Census
• 1911 Wales Census
• 1911 Isle of Man Census

It will be available for the 1930 US Federal Census in the near future.

You can access the interactive image beta viewer from the record page by clicking on “View Interactive Image (BETA).”

How can you send feedback?

Please use the “Send comments” link at the top of the viewer.

What’s new?

Family Highlights

Highlights help you find people quickly by automatically highlighting the entire household. This is most useful when there are multiple families on one image.

• Yellow highlight – Whether you selected someone from your tree or searched for someone new, that person is highlighted in yellow when viewing his or her record in the Interactive Image Viewer.
• Green highlight – If the person that is highlighted in yellow is in a household that has any other members, the other members of the household are highlighted in green.
• Orange highlight – An orange highlight is placed on any row that is not already highlighted in green or yellow when your mouse hovers over that row. This will only show up when there are multiple families in a household.

Informative Tips

By hovering over various cells, you can see a transcription of that cell and learn more about the facts in the record. Simply hover your mouse over an element of the record and a text tip appears.

Name Label Overlay

When you zoom in on an image, names labels will appear on the left side of the viewer so you can see exactly whose information you’re viewing.

Moving the image

The new image viewer has many features that are similar to the Advanced Image Viewer many of you are already using. We’ve also added some new features.

• Click and Drag – Click anywhere on the image, hold down your mouse button, and drag your mouse in the direction that you wish to pan the image.
• Onscreen Controls – Use the arrow buttons to pan the image left, right, up, or down. Additionally, you can use the magnifying glass buttons at the top of the onscreen controls or the slider at the bottom of the onscreen controls to zoom in or out of the image.
• Keyboard Controls – Use the arrow keys on your keyboard. This will enable you to pan left, right, up, or down. You may also use the “+” or “-” keys on your keyboard to zoom in or out. Press the “Home” key to move your current view to the far left of the current image. Press the “End” key to move your current view to the far right of the current image. Press the “Page Up” key to move to the top of the current image. Press the “Page Down” key to move to the bottom of the current image.
• Mouse Wheel Zoom – If your mouse has a mouse wheel, you can use it to zoom in or out of the image.

We have also added some new options under the “Image” menu (below the Save button).

• Rotate Clockwise and Rotate Counter-clockwise – These menu items will rotate the image by 90 degrees in either the clockwise or counterclockwise direction.
• Flip Horizontally and Flip Vertically – These menu items will flip the image.
• Invert Colours – This option will reverse the colours of the image (black becomes white, white becomes black). In some cases, this will improve the readability of the image.
• Increase and Decrease Contrast – Use the increase or decrease contrast menu items to improve the contrast on the image.

Actions Menu

Use the Actions menu to print, view record source, remove highlighting, and more. Please note that this interactive image viewer is still in beta and some of the features you may be used to seeing are not available yet.

Print – Print the image or the current view

• View highlighting – By default, household highlights are displayed on the image. Select this menu item to disable household highlights.
• View source – Select this menu item to open the source panel and learn which organisation provided the image.

What features are coming soon?

• Index panel – See a transcription of the key fields underneath the image.
• Change locations by browsing – Change the focus of your browsing by selecting a new location directly from the image browse path.
• Improvements to save to tree – Saving to tree is available but the features which recognise whether you have come from a hint or if you have already saved this image are not implemented yet.
• Comments and corrections – We will add the ability to provide comments and corrections soon. We value all of your additions to our records.
• Sharing – Sharing the image via email, Facebook, or Twitter is coming soon.

Thank you for your input and suggestions on the beta version of the interactive image viewer. We will be making many updates to this viewer in the upcoming weeks to add more new features and the other “coming soon” features listed above.

AUTHORED BY KENDALL HULET (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

For all of our Ancestry.co.uk users that have been patiently waiting for an Android app, your wait is over! We’re happy to announce the launch of our new Android app just in time for the holidays.

Download the app now.

The new Ancestry app for Android phones and tablets allows you to interact with your Ancestry.co.uk family tree while on the go. Not only can you view and edit your existing family trees, but you can also build new family trees from scratch, add new family members, edit their information, add and edit life events, and view historical records that have been attached on Ancestry.co.uk – anytime, anywhere. You never know where or when you’ll make a new discovery. It’s like having your entire family tree in your pocket!

Here’s what you can do with the new Android app:

• View your family tree on your Android phone or tablet (you can easily zoom in or out to see anywhere from 2 to 5 or more generations)
• Start a new family tree or add to an existing one easily
• View life events and family members for the ancestors in your tree
• Add, edit and delete people, life events and facts
• Easily locate any ancestor in your family tree with our handy search tool
• View historical documents and indexed information that you’ve attached to your family tree on Ancestry.co.uk
• Many more features (like photos) coming soon… stay tuned!

To get started, download the Ancestry Android app here.

AUTHORED BY JIM MOSHER (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

Thanks to all of you who have provided feedback on the new Advanced Image Viewer on the blog, via the message boards, through the survey, and directly via email (feedback-imageviewer@ancestry.com). We appreciate the input – both positive and negative – and have used it to further improve the viewer.

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]

AUTHORED BY KENDALL HULET (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to view and merge Ancestry.co.uk’s “shaky leaf” record hints into your family tree directly on your iPhone, iPad or iPod?  We thought so, too.

Today, we announced the availability of an enhanced version 3 of our iPhone, iPad and iPod app, Ancestry, that now offers several new features:

• Ability to access Ancestry.co.uk’s “shaky leaf” hints for new discoveries of historical records about your ancestors directly in the app
• Merge functionality that identifies and extracts information about family members from historical records to help you grow your tree
• In-app purchasing, allowing non-subscribers to access record hints without a subscription
• Improved ability to add information to photos
• Ability to easily change your family tree privacy settings
• A more stable app with better performance

Don’t have an Apple iOS device?  Don’t worry, our Android app is in beta testing and will be available in late December for download.

For more information, or to download the app, visit the App Store.

AUTHORED BY JIM MOSHER (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

Several years ago, we launched the Advanced Image Viewer. This viewer provided some much-needed capabilities and was welcomed by the users who could take advantage of it. Our other users – almost 50% of our total user base – continued to use a basic image viewer which provided somewhat limited capabilities. Over time, as browsers changed, the Advanced Image Viewer worked for fewer and fewer of our users.

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 optimise 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 optimise 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

We’ve been working hard on an Android version of the Ancestry mobile app, and we’re looking for Android users to help us test an early beta version. If you are interested in being a beta tester, regularly use an Android phone or tablet, and are an Ancestry subscriber, please click here to take a short survey. We will contact a small group of respondents that meet our requirements. Watch this space for future testing opportunities and announcements on the Android app’s progress.

Survey link: http://ancestry.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0TWfUEG80omFPgw

AUTHORED BY STEPHANIE CRUZ (FROM ANCESTRY.COM)

Did you know that you can share your member tree with friends and family for free? Send them an email invitation and they can see your tree once they register for an Ancestry.co.uk account. A subscription is not required for them to see your tree.

A new and easier way to share your tree

With our release last week, we’ve made it easier to invite people to your tree. You can now import your contact list from Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, and AOL accounts to quickly select people you want to send an invitation to. You can still type in individual email addresses if you’d like, but by importing your contact list you can save a little time and effort trying to remember your cousin’s email address.

How to invite friends and family to see your tree

From your tree, click on the “Share your tree” link in the “Tree pages” menu next to your tree name.

From the share pop-up window, you’ll have several options for inviting people to your tree. From the left hand column, you can choose to type in email addresses one-by-one, invite Ancestry.co.uk members if you know their username, or import your contact list from your email account.

Selecting people from your imported contact list

When you choose to import your contact list, you will be asked to connect to your email account. Once you log into your email account and give us permission to access your account, we will import your contact list so that you can choose who you want to invite to see your tree.

To protect your privacy, we never store your username or password. And we only save the contact information for people you have invited to your tree. Once you finish sending your invitations, your entire contact list is erased (unless you invite everyone on your list).

Once your contact list is imported, select the people you want to invite to your tree. We don’t send an invitation to your full contact list. We only send it to the people you’ve selected from your list.

Setting roles before you send your invitation

You can choose roles to control what you will allow your friends and family to work on in your tree. Each person with whom you want to share your tree will have a drop down menu next to their name.

• Choose “Editor” if you want to give your cousin full access to add and edit people in your tree.
• Choose “Contributor” if you want your cousin to add photos but not change any facts in your tree.
• Choose “Guest” if you don’t want your cousin to have any rights except to see your tree.

When you’re finished, click the orange button to share your tree and we will send your friends and family an email invitation.

Managing your invitations

To go back to the list of people you’ve invited to your tree, you can visit the sharing tab in your tree setting page. You can find this link under the “Tree pages” menu.

Sharing your tree is a great way to get your family involved and have them help you fill it in!

By Kate Lloyd, Ancestry.co.uk member

All my life my mother refused to talk about her family except to say that she had a twin sister, tall brothers and had been an orphan. On going through her documents after she died I found no birth certificate and so I sent off for it from the Public Records Office. When it arrived I thought I had been sent the wrong document because both the first names were different from the ones I knew. Checking the surname and date of birth, I realised that the certificate was in fact correct, and this became the start of a long and enduring quest for more information about her life and her family.

Using Ancestry.co.uk I discovered that my mother Margo was illegitimate, one of ten children from the same father and one of eight illegitimate siblings. She had never mentioned having sisters apart from her twin, but I found there were four girls altogether, and four boys.

She certainly wasn’t an orphan and both her parents were alive into my lifetime. So for some reason, which is still not completely clear to me, she had disconnected herself totally from the family.

Through my initial research with Ancestry.co.uk I met up with Lily, my mother’s younger sister, Lily, who is now over 90 and lives quite near me, and a cousin who is the son of my mother’s older sister, who also lives nearby. From my surviving aunt’s family I’ve also met her daughter and granddaughter.

I found during the early phase of family research that my mother’s twin had a son who died several years ago, and another who was mentioned on his death certificate. His middle name was quite unusual so I searched for him online and found him living in Minnesota. We got in touch and he provided me with a number of pictures of his mother and mine, proving that they were non-identical twins.

The internet has been an invaluable research tool for me and I could never have found out so much without using the amazing network of documents and records. I know that I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg and that there is so much more to find out.

My mother bought her first computer at the age of 81. When using the internet search field on her computer I discovered quite accidentally that she had recently been trying to find her twin – apparently without success. I felt a little sad to know that she had died some ten years earlier. If my mother had used Ancestry.co.uk perhaps she would have been able to find her twin in time to speak to her again, possibly for the first time since 1939.

Recently via Ancestry.co.uk, I tried their new service, Living Relative Search, which uses Electoral Roll data, telephone directory and Land Registry information to give you details about a person’s whereabouts. All I had to do was enter the names of the people I wanted to search for and after just a couple of searches, I found a cousin who lived somewhere near me!

I went to meet him and his wife, which really helped extend my knowledge of the family.  It was lovely to meet someone who knew my aunts and whose existence I had not previously suspected. This newly-discovered cousin gave me the name of another cousin and so my search continues.

To visit Living Relative Search, go to www.LivingRelativeSearch.co.uk