Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Tech Tuesday - Ancestry.com's Android App

We obtained a Samsung Galaxy Tablet back in December for Linda to use to read her email, and check Facebook occasionally, while in bed or in the family room (the thought was that she wouldn't have to wait for me to leave the desktop computer for ten minutes).  That experiment didn't last long - she didn't like it.  Therefore, I get to work, er, play with it.

I loaded the Ancestry.com Android App on it, but I cannot access the same Ancestry Member Tree on the tablet that I can access on the iPhone.  I toyed with the idea of making a duplicate Tree with a different name just for the Android, but I haven't done that yet.  I decided to access the Buntin tree that I started some time ago, since it hooks into my Auble family.

Then I had to learn how to take screen captures on the tablet - I Googled it and easily found that I could do that by pressing the Back icon (the 180 degree arrow at the bottom of the screen) and the "On" button (on the side of the tablet) at the same time.  That works, but there was a little learning curve to get the timing down.

Finally, I was ready to access my Ancestry Member Tree using the App yesterday, but I had to update the Android App version first.  That seemed to work quickly, and I tapped the Ancestry App icon.  Since the App updated, I had to choose a Tree on my list:


I chose the Buntin tree, and it opened and started at David Buntin as it opened:


The background above is the same dark gray that we saw on the iPhone App yesterday.

I navigated back to my great-great-grandfather, David Auble (1817-1894) - by flicking on Anna Auble and then on her father David - I could have used the Search icon on the Ancestry line to find him) and tapped his name and his Person screen showed:


There are four icons at the top of the screen below the Ancestry logo - for the "Person," the "Family," the "Evidence" and the "Photos" (from left to right).

There is also a link to click for "View Relationship to Me."  I like that...

Note that there are no Hints on this screen - apparently, the Android App for Ancestry.com doesn't provide green leaf Hints yet.  I hope that they do in a future release.

I was curious to see if I could search online for records, and I knew (from my iPhone experience) that this capability was probably at the bottom of the "Evidence" screen.  I tapped the "evidence" button and saw the list of


In this file, I had already attached the 1850 U.S. Census as a "Residence" Fact and had "Residence" Facts for the 1860 and 1880 U.S. Census, but no document images appear to be attached.

The "Search Ancestry.com to find historical documents about David Auble" link is how I would try to find records to attach to this person.

I wanted to see what the 1850 U.S. Census "Residence" fact looked like on the tablet, so I tapped on the record line and the information for the publisher appeared:


The Publisher information isn't really too useful - I expected to see a source citation for the Record.

I tapped on the "View Record" button and the document image opened.  I magnified the image and scrolled down to where the David Auble family was listed in the 1850 U.S. Census:



I have a mystery here - I went and opened this Tree on Ancestry.com to see if I had attached the record for the 1860 and 1880 U.S. Census records.  I had, but the thumbnail image didn't show up in the "Evidence" list above for some reason.  I wonder why?

I rechecked on the App - the 1860 and 1880 thumbnails now appear, but after one minute the 1850 thumbnail has not appeared.  Strange.  It appeared in the second minute.

I also struggled in my Search for other records on the Android Ancestry.com App, so I'll leave that for another blog post.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/08/tech-tuesday-ancestrycoms-android-app.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Update:  21 August:  I found that I could access any of my Ancestry Member Trees using my Samsung Galaxy Tablet mobile device, even the one that I access on my iPhone.

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