There is a very dark brown background for the top banner line - with the Ancestry leaf logo, and links for "Home," "Trees," "Search," "DNA," "Help" and "Extras." Over on the right are icons for Hints, Mail, and Settings. This banner line is on every Ancestry page (except for record images). I dislike the color, but they didn't ask me! The dark brown matches the mobile app background. I would prefer a lighter background (white, light yellow, peach, a light red) with dark text, but, apparently, that is not what Ancestry wants.
"Home," "Trees," "Search" and "DNA" were on the previous top menu line, and all but Home had a dropdown menu.
The "Help" dropdown menu looks like this:
The "Help" item has links for Learning Center, Support, Community, Message Boards and Hire an Expert.
The "Extras" dropdown menu item looks like this:
The "Extras" dropdown menu items are Family Tree Maker Software, iOS & Android apps, Photo Books & Posters, ProGenealogists, and Gift Subscriptions.
On the right side of the Home screen, at the top on my screen, is a new section titled "Products and Services." The links are for:
* Learn About AncestryDNA
* Hire an Expert
* Give a gift Subscription
* Buy Family Tree Maker
* Download Our Mobile apps
* Order Photo Books and Posters
Below that are links to other Ancestry.com properties;
* Archives.com
* Fold3.com
* Newspapers.com
There is some duplication in the dropdown menus and right-side links. I guess they figured that some users might not be able to find the dropdown menus!
I tried to "Customize your homepage" to move the right-side links noted above down below the very useful Record Collection links, and was not able to do so. Drat. Now I have to scroll when I come back to the home page.
The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/11/new-ancestrycom-home-screen-and-banner.html
Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver
4 comments:
The changes haven't hit my page yet, could be a different server. It doesn't look like a big improvement.
I have the new page, but I do not have the "Products and Services" section..yet. Thus I am able to customize my page as I want.
The "hide stuff under buttons" programmer seems to be back. There is plenty of room not to hide "Collaborate" and "Learning Center". Not to mention make the navigation bar a lot more readable.
Thanks for the warning, Randy. The design feature of having a black nav bar with light-colored lettering is used by other sites that I visit, and I hate it. If you have an old monitor like mine it is almost impossible to read.
It's especially annoying when features like this are rolled out, and it is something you don't like, because it is rarely restricted to just that one website. If something is "in", you will see it spreading all over the net like a disease.
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