Desperate for the Old Format option!
I, like hundreds who've already clearly explained the pertinent valid reasons for it, would like to see the "old format" for a person's page be kept as an option. New doesn't necessarily always mean "better." You give us the chance for suggestions to improve the site; great! So... how are they being listened to? Many of us are seniors & not too tech savvy, thus -at least out of respect for our community- the option to use the old format (which everyone was able to handle easily) should've remained.
Saying, "Give it a try; take the time to learn about it; & so on..." would be more feasible if the new page were visually more user-friendly to start with! As many've said: "It's too busy"; & w/ the 100s of hours it takes to do in-depth research, merge, fix problems created by indexers, etc, etc., the last thing we need is a "new" page w/ unnecessary added challenges. I don't mean at all to discredit the hard work put into these changes, but for the soooo many who find the old outline more manageable, PLEASE reconsider. Most of our relatives, on the other side, have been waiting too long for our involvement. Why not make it easier for them then, seriously, by helping us & keep both formats available?!? If for ANY product there's ample marketing research, & customers' feedback is primarily considered, in order to create an improved version of it, how come this most important task of family research & history ended up basically ignoring such guidelines?
I'd love to hear from you. And I hope you get the inspiration needed to make this site better -that is, really listening to the voice of none other than... its users! Thank you so much for your time in reading this.
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Unfortunately, comments like "It's too busy" do not help the designers improve anything.
Can you list three specific items on the Details page, which is the page where you should be doing all your research, that are "too busy"?
From the time the updated pages were released on the beta site over a year ago, to when they became an option on the production site over six months ago, to when when the old pages closed a month or so ago, the designers and programmers made dramatic changes to them. These changes primarily came from user feedback and suggestions. The process of early release, acquiring user feedback, and using that feedback for final development seemed to go quite well.
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I really fail to understand such emotional comments. All web sites get reorganized. All programs are updated. The New Person Page was extremely easy to get used to. I am in my 70s, by the way. Stop lumping "seniors" in this. I saw the improvements in the New Person Page early in the Beta period and stopped using the old view some time in 2022.
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The Old Format is not coming back. See The New Person Page is Here to Stay
I'm also in my 70s, and I began using the New Look, exclusively, early in the time the two formats ran in parallel. I've lost count of how many iterations of FamilySearch, Ancestry, Find My Past, and others I have used in the 15+ years I've been researching.
Websites must update and change to maintain their usefulness.
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Unfortunately, comments like "It's too busy" do not help the designers improve anything.
Professional UX and UI people hear comments like that from management all the time, and know how to parse what it means, what the concerns are and how to address them. They, unlike layperson customers or most people on this board, are paid to do that.
I really wish people who don't work for the site would let other users express their valid frustrations without challenging or dismissing them,, responding with contempt, or really, responding at all. Even if it's not a perfectly constructed suggested change, it's still honest, and it's not your role to gatekeep them. It's like hearing somebody complain about a bad meal they had and saying "well mine was fine, so there must be something wrong with you". If the design team doesn't understand the complain sufficiently, let them follow up. They have a few hundred complaints in the thread linked above, these forums and on the new page group if they're actually interested in understanding the issues better. Instead of pushing back on the complaints, why not encourage the design team liaison to talk to the users?
And yes, websites require maintenance, but technical changes don't necessitate these aesthetic changes. There was no technical requirement that caused the buttons to be scattered to he corners of the window and dialogs, Similar Source list links to stop showing when those links were clicked,
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I really wish people who don't work for the site would let other users express their valid frustrations without challenging or dismissing them
The vast majority of contributors in the Community do not work for the site. If the poster doesn't want replies from folks who don't work for the site, this is not the place to post.
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Maybe the just don't want to hear from people telling them they're wrong for having a preference? Maybe they don't want to be blamed for not expressing their frustrations in some specific manner quickly enough by other random? How is pushing back on other regular users for disliking these specific changes and blaming them for things not at all within their control at all helpful here? Let them vent in peace.
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What we consider to be "worse"(or remain unhappy about) on the new page (compared to the "old") is largely down to personal preferences. For example, I don't like the fact that the reason statement fields are now more difficult to notice / read, but I can't remember anyone else picking that particular matter as an issue that needs to be addressed.
However, one item that has been commented upon - and still remain an issue for many users - is the "missing" box around children's names: well, it is there, but the borders are in very light grey, so the names seem to "run into" each other.
Again, the issue with the event date of a couple relationship is down to preference, but I (and many others) remain most unhappy that it has been moved from between, to below, the names.
Another problem is the brightness of the screen, which the introduction of High Contrast Mode has not addressed at all. Surely the way the page appearance would affect certain users (especially with eye problems) should have been a consideration from the start - not an afterthought.
There is also the bug with the timeline that the engineers seem unable to put right. Months after being reported, the map displayed is still invariably one of North America - even when every event has been standardized and all events relate to (say) the same county in England.
Also, those horrible "default" portraits remain - in their gaudy red (or is that pink?) and blue colours.
In summary, there are plenty of issues that many of us still feel need to be addressed, some appearing as very much a backward step from the old version. Trouble is, what doesn't suit one user is perfectly fine to another - as, I believe, is the case with you, in the example of the event data now being below the couple's names!
One issue I do feel hasn't been explained fully, however, is the suggestion that the change was completely essential, since the old version could no longer be maintained (due to obsolete fonts, etc.). A few of the websites I use have remained unchanged in format for at least 10-12 twelve years now, so I wonder how there is no difficulty in their engineers maintaining those, but the "essential" need for changes to FamilySearch pages?
I must admit that there are several enhanced features on the new pages (which, to me, act as a "trade-off" with the negative aspects) and my real problem remains with the truly awful Records page, which - after two years - I still find practically unusable (especially in respect of those relating to census records). Whereas, I am adapting reasonably well to the New Person Page - in spite of my criticisms!
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@Paul W I agree there are still issues and that there are things people don't like. There I things I don't like such as having source entry be in a pop up that makes it harder to copy and paste names and dates from the top banner of the page. I also feel that due to personal preferences, being a web page designer on a site like FamilySearch that is both highly complex and heavily used must be a pretty thankless task.
I assume it is the functional changes that were essential. Why they did the cosmetic ones, I certainly don't know but I'm also very aware that I am one user out of several million in dozens of countries and that the new pages discussion group only has 546 members. This means the vast majority of users could be very happy with the update and thought the older look was ugly and hard to work on. (Yes, I know, someone will comment that the vast majority of users just have no idea how to use the site to give feedback.)
As far as definite bugs that are still not working right, such as the timeline map. I'm sure nothing on this complex of a site is ever as easy to fix as it might seem and that the annoyance of the map acting like it is has a lower priority than something like the complete overall of all fonts that Lyle mentions, among other items, in his updated announcement on the new person page.
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moderator note - comments were edited due to violations of the Code of Conduct.
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