Suggestions

This is the first time I have viewed my tree since the update. All I can say is WHY? The compressed box is pointless and it won't allow me to expand to full screen. I probably don't have as many names in my tree as most people but its useless trying to move it round when it goes slower than a snail.
As the old adage goes 'DON'T FIX WHAT ISN'T BROKE'.
Go back to the old tree in the old colours, so much easier to view.

What is the matter with place names on the new tree?
I wanted to type in the birthplace of Watford, Herts. for one of my ancestors.
On beginning to type 'Watf......' I am presented with the following possibilities:

Watford, Daventry District, Northamptonshire, England, United Kingdom
Watford Rural, Three Rivers, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom
Watford District, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom
Watford, Watford District, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom

HUH?
Where on earth do these suggestions come from??

'Watford, Herts.' comes up as 'No matches found'.
OK I know that at the end of the day we can type in what we want, but the options presented are just not appropriate. They ought to be removed altogether since they have no useful purpose.

Beverley,

I recently complained to GR about this:-

"What on Earth have you done to the pop-up list of addresses? Whoever gives their address as "Abingdon, Vale of White Horse District, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom"? You might as well carry on, as we did as children and say, "The Earth, The Universe, The Milky Way..." The old address format - "Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England" was fine. Why change it????"

The answer I got was:-

"I am sorry that you are not happy with the recent changes that we have made to the Genes Reunited tree.

We have changed this because the different ares can then be searched fro(sic) and hopefully with this kind of details you may get more matches.

I hope this helps"

Erm... no, not really!

Haha Simon!

I wish I could remember the circumstances now but I went to add another ancestor recently, somewhere in Birmingham, and among my list of options was the T.B. Hospital. :-S

'Hopefully with this kind of details you may get more matches'...... does this mean that since 'Watford Herts,' gives 'No matches found', these ancestors will NEVER be matched up with other people's trees??

Stephen, of course you can just type over their 'suggestions' - so why have them at all?

I recently added a birthplace as Jersey.
Genes suggested Jersey,Channel Isles,Madadaon
Any idea where Madadaon comes from?

Hi,

I think I could adapt to the new layout if only it wasn't so slow. Is there any reason for the sluggishness & is it likely to speed up in the near future?

Regards

Coreen

When you start to type the name of a place in and other suggestions come up is quite normal practice on other sites - nothing new about it. As you press each key, the sequence changes until it hits possibilities. It is then up to you to decide which is the correct place for your search.


Google works like that.


When you type the name of a place into the BT residential phone book, if there is more than one place with the same name, it gives you the choice to choose the one you want.


Thelma, I think the GR computer may have picked up the following link from google....




Location: Jersey, Channel Islands. Posts: 9. Hyderabad to Goa ... 36 MAO MADGAON 3 13:40 13:45 5:00 825 2 37 VSG VASCO DA GAMA 3 ...

Coreen, can you say roughly how many people you have in your tree. Is it under 5,000 over 20,000 or somewhere in between?

I am trying to find out if it is large trees that have a particular problem.

I think that there are several problems.
Members always had problems editing after uploading a gedcom and the new tree is not compatible with the old tree so is treating it as a gedcom.
I feel that you cannot actually delete anything only hide it,the same as My threads and trees to which you have access.
I have one second wife that will not display in my main tree and yet will display on my free account.
Cynthia
You could be right that Genes are using a search engine to suggest places.Shame that the correct places are not included.

I am very sorry but i dislike your new tree concept the old one was much better,easier to use and see.Clicking on the button to show it full page doesn't seem work,the arrows and the little tree obliterate half of the very small window and i wonder why they are needed at all,the way you had it before was much better.Why was it necessary to change and ruin a site which used to be a pleasure to use,that is something you don't always find.Perhaps it would be a good idea to give your users the option of keeping the original features,that way you could see which concept was thought to be the best,i would be more than delighted if this was available,i would change back as quickly as it was possible to do.

When a major update is made to the tree, could a page appear when the tree is selected for the first time. This should give an outline of the changes that have been made to the tree and, more important, indicating where fuller details are given (FAQs) and, if there is still a problem, how to contact support.

As there are still people coming back to the tree for the first time since the recent update, it might even be worth doing it now.

There needs to be some optimisation of the time it takes to download the full tree for those people who have large trees (in excess of 10000 names).

I looked at a number of trees that I have access to in order to find out how long it takes to get the full tree. Nearly all are under 2500 names and the immediate view came up in a couple of seconds, never more than 5. For the full view most cases took between 5 and 10 seconds, though one tree with 1400 names took 13 seconds and one with 2100 names took 11 seconds.

One tree with 4000 names took ten seconds on one occasion and 43 seconds on another.

The real problem came with the largest tree I have access to which is just under 17000 names. On the three times I tried it, the time taken was 25 seconds, 44 seconds, but on the other occasion it took 3 minutes 28 seconds.
In all cases one the tree was loaded it did seem to stay accessible immediately even after looking at other trees.

Most of the time taken in these tests was in downloading relations and, in the 3 minute case it appeared to have got stuck for over a minute at one point.

Since some of the strongest critics of the new tree have trees larger than 20000 names, I think some attention needs to be given to that problem.

Edit 11/09/2012 07:57
I tried the large tree again this morning and it took a total of 3 minutes 52 seconds to display the full tree. 3 minutes 30 seconds of that was downloading relations and that appeared to stick threr times (at 40sec, 80 sec, 135sec). From 135sec to 210 sec the bar was showing downloading relations as completed but the next bar had not appeared.

Stephen_SG


you posted .....................

Stephen_SG 10 Sep 2012 20:40

Porkie_Pie A question for you if i may be so bold.

You respond as if you were one on the staff.

Are you of genes staff?
Are you of Brightsolid staff
Or could it be dcthomson.

Or could it be the workers from home base.

--------------

don't be so silly!!


and rude



PorkiePie is a member just like you, just like me


............. a long time member, and one who knows his way around the site, and is somewhat more computer literate than me, and possibly you.



He's been around almost as long as I have ............... and he helps many people.



I don't find your comment in the least bit amusing



sylvia

Oooh! look when I wrote this message! Still no sign of anybody from GR reaing this board they asked us to contribute to....

Simon Report Edit Delete 29 Aug 2012 17:01

What chance of someone form the Genes Team now posting a note on this thread to indicate that they have read and inwardly digested the comments therein???

Slim, I guess, but it really would be a morale booster for all those posters who have taken the time to write up their comments about the ghastly new tree.

Even better, of course, would be for GR to now say what they are actually going to do to improve matters. The majority opinion from this thread is firmly that the new format is disliked (to put it mildly) and that many are proposing to leave GR when their current sub runs out. Surely that should be a matter of concern for GR and make them LISTEN to what us paying customers WANT. (But maybe they don't realise that because they don't actually read this thread - despite what they say?

Hi everyone, thanks to you all for your posts so far. I have been on holiday for a couple of weeks so not been around to post. I am sorry if you thought we were ignoring you - that is not the case at all.

I will be taking some time out this week though to sit down, read every suggestion and make a note of them. I speak to the tree team on a weekly basis and it looks like there will be some good suggestions to pass on.

Kind regards,

Estelle

Simon, looks like you spoke to soon.

AT LAST SOME ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Yeah! Thanks Estelle! I know you do exist, really! Let's hope you and the Tree Team really do produce a list of 'proposed actions' and post it on here for people to see before you start fiddling again...

Ian, I sent her a personal email asking her to post something as the members were revolting. ;-)

At last I have been RR'd. Only the second time and thrilled. Think I was defending Sylvia and Porkie Pie and saying how nice they could be bothered to communicate with their fellow paying members, so that must be unacceptable to somebody :-D :-D

Thanks for your email

I'm sorry you're having problems viewing the whole of your dashboard

If you can only see some of the names on your shared tree list/dashboard it's likely you've got your compatibility view switched on on your browser.

If you go to 'tools' and then please ensure that compatibility view and compatibility view settings are both unticked, you should then be able to search your tree again. For Internet Explorer 8 when you open your internet browser on an internet page you will see at the top of the page, File, Edit, View, Favourites and Tools - please click on 'Tools' and you will then see compatibility view.

If you turn this compatibility view off you'll find that you can view the whole of your dashboard.

The old tree has been removed from the site now so it's not possible to access this any more.

A few weeks ago we removed the old tree from the site as we felt the new tree was ready to completely replace the old tree. It was always the teams' intention to retire the old tree eventually and after a long period of ironing out a few glitches, Genes decided to remove the old tree permanently.

If there are any aspects of using the new tree you'd like any help with, or any problems you've spotted, please do let us know and we'll try and get the issues resolved for you.

For any queries you might have regarding how to operate the new tree, we've answered some FAQ's which you can find here.

I don't have compatible view on my computer set on it is always off.

And if I could access my tree perfecty well before you messed about with it and added a new one - it is something you have done not me or my computer.

So please do what we your customers want for a change and that is something like the old tree was simple easy to use and more importantly you listen to what we want you to do and that is tthe old tree back ........