Tuesday, September 3, 2019

A First Look at RootsMagic 8 - Big Changes Ahead

Michael Booth on the RootsMagic blog has posted the first screenshot of the upcoming RootsMagic Version 8 screen - see all of the details in The Road to RootsMagic 8 (Part 1): Easier than Ever, posted 2 September.

Here is the screen shot on the blog post (for a clearer image, click on the image in Michael's blog post):


There are three panels on this screen:

1)  The left panel has menu items that control the other two panels.  They are:

*  File
*  Dashboard
*  People (the screen above is for People)
*  Places
*  Sources
*  Media
*  Tasks
*  Addresses
*  Search
*  Publish
*  Settings

2)  The middle panel has all of the "views" including icons for:

*  Pedigree (shown on the screen above)
*  Family
*  Descendants
*  Persons (?)
*  Groups (?)
*  Home Person (?)
*  Back
*  Forward

In addition, the middle panel has:

*  + icon (perhaps to add an unrelated person?)
*  a three-dot icon (which may have other useful functions, like Tools, TreeShare, etc)

3)  The right-hand panel has all of the information for the highlighted person on the View in icons for:

*  Info - for highlighted person (shown on screen above)
*  Person List (?) - the letter icon - probably all of the persons in the tree file
*  Timeline (?) - the clock icon - probably the list of events for the person
*  Media (?) - what is that icon?
*  Notes (?) - the note card icon?  probably person notes

4)  I don't see a FamilySearch icon or a WebHints icon on the screen above.  I expect (and hope) that they will be next to the name on the View panels like in RM7. 

5)  I did get a 20 minute preview of all of this at Jamboree from Bruce Buzbee, but I can't recall all of the details.  The detail I do recall is that navigating to a specific person will be done in the right-hand panel (I think) with the Person List icon - there will be a search field open to go to a named person (this is different from the Name Index in RootsMagic 7). 

For comparison purposes, here is a RootsMagic 7 Pedigree View screen:


And here is a RootsMagic 7 "Edit Person" screen for my grandfather:

This change from RootsMagic Version 7 to Version 8 will have a significant learning curve, in my opinion.  All of those menu and icon links on the RootsMagic 7 View screen, and many of the buttons on the Edit Person screen, will be in a different place now, and the process for adding or editing data will be somewhat different.

There are two screen shots on the RootsMagic blog post - one for Windows (the screen shown above) and one for Macintosh computers.  They look identical!

I think that RootsMagic will release more screen views in the coming months, and as the release of the RootsMagic 8 program becomes reality there will be videos on the RootsMagic TV YouTube channel and also in their blog posts and their RootsMagic Users Facebook group.

I am not a RootsMagic beta tester, but have had the limited exposure to the Version 8 at Jamboree.  Some of my comments above are conjecture and may be wrong, so take them with a grain of salt.

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

Disclosure:  I am a satisfied user of the RootsMagic family tree program and have been since about 2006.  I have paid for every software version release since.  I have received no financial considerations from RootsMagic ever (to my knowledge).



Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

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5 comments:

Robbhaas said...

Thanks Randy for the higher res photo of the screen shot!! - the one in my email from RootsMagic was unreadable.

Linda Stufflebean said...

It does look significantly different and I think there will be a good-sized learning curve. . . .just when I've pretty much figured out where everything is and how to use it. It's kind of like knowing where everything is on the supermarket shelves. . .until the head office decides products need to be rotated. Any idea when RM 8 will be released? I thought it would be available at RootsTech and then by the other spring conferences when that didn't happen.

Randy Seaver said...

Linda, the official date is before the end of 2019. I hope so!

I too thought it would be at NGS or FGS. Perhaps RootsTech London? On my October birthday?

Donald said...

Looks a lot like GRAMPs now. I do use GRAMPs along with RM and like it too.

Marian B. Wood said...

Given the color in the screen shots you posted, this RM update would be most welcome for my "senior" eyes! I also hope the update is speedier for Macs. Thanks for the preview.