Wednesday, September 5, 2018

FamilySearch Family Tree Person Page Changes

On the FamilySearch blog, Leslie Albrecht Huber has written Changes in Family Tree Shed New Light on Your Ancestors’ Lives, describing the changes to the Person page for each profile in the FamilySearch Family Tree.

I took a look at the changes for several of my ancestors, and, while the changes are different, they didn't eliminate anything of importance, and they added several new features.

I will briefly go through the different sections of the Person page for a specific profile (which may not be representative of your ancestors).  The new Person page has sections for "Details," "Time Line," "Sources," "Collaborate" and "Memories."  There is also a link on the right-hand side above the blue line to "View My Relationship."

1)  For the Person profile of George Soule (1602-1679), a Mayflower passenger, here is the top of his Person page for the "Details" section (two slides):


As you can see on the slides above, there are sections on the right-hand side of the screen for "Research Help," "Search Help," "Latest Changes," "Tools," and "Print."  Those have not changed much.

The sub-sections on the "Details" page include "Life Sketch," "Vital Events," "Other Information" and "Family."  The information in any of the sub-sections on the "Details" page can be edited by clicking on the "Edit" link for the event or relationship.

The "Time Line," "Sources," and "Collaborate" sections are new - they used to be part of the "Person" page as sub-sections.

2)  Further down the "Details" page, the "Family" sub-section shows the family with spouses and children, and the family with parents and siblings.


Note that in the screen above, there are no parents and siblings listed for George Soule I(but wait, someone will add parents soon, and they will probably be wrong!).

The user can edit the relationship information by clicking on the box on the right side of the relationship person.  Clicking on the relationship person will take the user to that person's "Person" page.

3)  In the new "Time Line" section, the different events in the person's life are shown, from Birth to Death in chronological order:

The events and relationship entries can be edited by clicking on the "Edit" link.

There are three links in this section, to "Add," to "Show" and to "Map."  Here is the "Show" dropdown link:


The user can choose to include or exclude the different events and relationships in the timeline.  The default seems to be to show all of them except for "Siblings."  You cannot choose to not show the Vital Events.

Clicking on the "Map" link adds a map to the right-hand side of the screen, with stick pins for vital events in the person's life:

The map can be zoomed in and out with a mouse wheel or using the plus/minus buttons in the top right of the screen.

4)  In the "Sources" section, each source attached to the Person profile can be seen.  The user can click on any source line and see the full source citation:

5)  In the "Collaborate" section, the "Notes" and "Discussion" are sub-sections.  Again, the user can click on any one of them and read the full text or edit the source citation.


6)  The "Memories" section has sub-sections for "Photos," "Documents," "Stories," and "Audio" which can be uploaded with "Upload" buttons on the screen:


7)  Finally, the "View My Relationship" link opens a window that provides a relationship chart (up to 15 generations), but it doesn't define the actual relationship for some reason.  Here is my relationship chart with George Soule:


And at the bottom (excluding the middle generations):


I had to figure out that George Soule is my 9th great-grandfather.

8)  There are other changes to the "Person" page, some of which are described in the FamilySearch blog post.


==============================================

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2018/09/familysearch-family-tree-person-page.html

Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.


1 comment:

Marian B. Wood said...

Especially pleased with the new sources format so it's easy to click and see the full citation for any source for any individual. Thanks for the screen-by-screen explanation!