Switch between Records Search & Tree Search
Hello, thanks for the great work on keeping FS up & running; I would like to propose to have a button to allow us to switch back and forth between the two sets of search results. Currently, if I input a set of search criteria in tree search "Discover Your Deceased Ancestors" and I don't get good results or I check the leads and want to search based on the same criteria or parameters in "Search Historical Records" in need to input the same information all over, if we have a "button" to expand the search into other areas or switch between the two that would be good. Thanks!
Answers
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@genthusiast, um, I don't recall search results in Tree and Records ever being combined. They can't be, really. The reason they're separate is that they're totally separate species. Like comparing apples to ....dunno, pollinating insects?
Are you perhaps thinking of the old Genealogies results below the Records results?
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Records ≠ Genealogies ≠ Tree.
I think one reason FS stopped including Genealogies/PRF results with Records searches is that too many people were getting utterly confused by them. Of course, the same confusion applies to the Tree links on attached records: people who come to FS for historical records are generally unaware of the mere existence of Family Tree, never mind its crowdsourced nature, so when they accidentally click the link, they come to all sorts of totally-wrong conclusions about the website as a whole.
This confusion between parts of FS is the main reason I don't think a combo search is a good idea. My other objection is more practical: where, in the new-and-disimproved search results interface, would you put a different type of result? On a smaller screen, people are already finding the display unusable, because it shows half a result at the bottom, and the collision of scroll bars makes it highly challenging to get to anything more; can you imagine the frustration if there were Tree and Genealogies results to navigate, as well?
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My solution is to keep two tabs or windows open, one for Find and one for Search.
I don't miss the Genealogies search results at the bottom of the Search pages. I work from historical records. The user-submitted Genealogies were even less usable than Family Tree.
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