New Image Viewer
As I searched the community for "new image viewer" just now, I was glad to be reminded of one of the upsides to the new image viewer (being able to edit/correct basically any items that are indexed incorrectly). Are there more that I should know about? Thus far, I've mainly taken note of the negatives (particularly as it relates to US Census Records):
- images load more slowly and fail to load more often
- location hierarchy of the image gets obscured -- as in "United States Census 1930-> California-> Alameda-> Oakland-> ED 18-> Image 35 of 38" becomes just "California Census Records 1930 -> Image 136 of 1,142"
- while viewing the indexed details for an entry, there's no way to estimate the position of the entry on the actual image by judging it's vertical position in relation to the other indexed entries on the scroll bar as was possible with the old viewer
- while viewing an image, detailed indexed data from all the members of a household can no longer be viewed at the same (or have I just not figured out how?)
Hopefully, solutions can be found to address some of these.
Answers
-
I totally agree with the problems mentioned above, and have been particularly disappointed in the scrolling and zooming in the new viewer. I'm including my comments below, hopefully in enough detail so the developers can reproduce the issues and make improvements.
The new image viewer of US census images is much worse than the old viewer, primarily when scrolling and zooming.
- The old viewer scrolled and zoomed quickly and was very smooth and intuitive, it was wonderful! The new viewer is very slow to scroll around and zoom, and is often blurry and takes seconds to become clear.
- In the new viewer, when I am zoomed in and scrolling quickly by a large amount by swiping my finger across the touch screen on my laptop, the view moves/updates slowly and by larger increments (not smooth), and often reverses direction at the end of the swipe even if there is more document to view in the desired direction. (Why reverse at all?) This problem did not exist in the old viewer. Although the new viewer does not reverse if I scroll very slowly. The old viewer has some "inertia" when scrolling quickly and continues to move in the desired direction for a short time after I release my finger from the touch screen, this was very nice!
- When scrolling around using the new viewer, very often an area of the document is blurry and takes several seconds to become clear. It behaves as if only a small part of the census image data is cached/downloaded on my computer and portions of it need to reload often when I scroll around even if they were clear a few moments ago. Why not just download the whole image to make scrolling smoother? Or retain all the image data that has previously been downloaded? The old viewer did not have this problem and the document remained mostly clear once an area was viewed.
Please fix the scroll and zoom behavior to match the old viewer which was perfectly done!
@lyleblunttoronto1 has been a contact in other issues for bug reports, so I'm mentioning them here.
1 -
I agree that the new viewer is not an improvement.
The good news is that you can go back to the old viewer by simply deleting the question mark and everything after it from the URL.
2 -
Thank you Julia for:
"The good news is that you can go back to the old viewer by simply deleting the question mark and everything after it from the URL."
Thank you, thank you!
0 -
I too dislike how slow this new image view is. Also not highlighting area of obit. See record GQ97-HN5.
I can attach several sources while I am waiting for image to load. 😥
0 -
Is anyone else still having issues with the new image viewer? It still has frequent crashes and severe lag for me. It will also occasionally cause all FamilySearch tabs to crash while it's trying to load. Clearing cache and cookies doesn't help, and I've tried both Firefox and Chrome but the issues occur on both. The new viewer has been out for over a month but it doesn't seem like these issues have been addressed, which is concerning considering how important record images are for research.
When can we expect to see these issues addressed?
0 -
The new viewer has been out since the 1950 census was being indexed, i.e., over a year and a half -- and it keeps coming up with new and better ways to mess up.
The main problem, in my opinion, is that it's trying to do too many things at once, and failing at all of them. It's trying to be an image browser, but at twenty seconds per image loading time, it's completely unusable as such. It's also trying to be the index editor, but it causes more problems than it's worth -- there's a good chance that your attempt at fixing an entry will actually result in that entry being effectively deleted. And don't even bother trying the supposed "add an entry" capability -- you'll go through a quarter hour's work that the system will not save (while lying to you cheerfully about it). And, since its cataloging "data" is the absolute farce found in the Images section, it utterly fails as a simple image viewer as well: you cannot find out minor details like the denomination of the church from it, and what it says about the location may or may not be on the correct continent.
4 -
I just don't understand why they would switch over to this as the main viewer when it doesn't work. And I can't wrap my head around why this isn't the highest priority for FamilySearch, considering digitized microfilm viewing is kinda the point on here. I'm glad I'm not alone in my frustration!
3 -
I am still having problems with the image viewer breaking after presenting an error message that it's failing to load. Not that it's actually failing to load.
What happens is that an error message will sometimes popup when I navigate to the next image. The image will load and display without a problem, but the error popup persists. From this point forward no images will load if opened in a new window or tab, even though they will load and display fine (apart from the error popup) in the existing tab. It seems like the error detection method is falsely detecting an error, then setting a flag that says it's busted even though it isn't. This flag is latched and cannot be reset.
There is no way to recover other than clearing all stored data, shutting down the browser, and then starting again from login.
This issue will always occur within about half an hour of first using the image viewer. So now I don't view any images at the start of a session, I wait until I have a bunch that I need to review and then try and process them all as quickly as possible before it screws up.
Looking at the code, it's clear that there are lots of post-production fiddles in there trying to work around the multiple issues. I wonder if it might be better to just junk the error detection and let us live with the fact that it might fail sometimes. At least it won't be latched as failed when it clearly isn't.
2 -
Today the image viewer took a lot longer to fail, but when it did, it simply failed to load the image. There was no pink popup box. Is this an indication that work is in progress ?
I decided to poke around inside to see what was going on. Using Developer Tools in Opera, I selected the Source tab to see the content, and expanded the www.familysearch.org and ark:/61903 components.
This revealed 3:1:3Q9M-CSD7-RVBD?personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQLF6-CZBR
by right-clicking on this source and choosing open in a new tab, the image loaded properly in a new instance of the viewer. Not a neat workaround, but it's got me back to a workable viewer.
1 -
Wow ! I just tried opening another image viewer, and the NEW image viewer opened -- And it Worked !
Then I tried another collection in a new tab, and it opened in the old viewer. -- But that worked too !
Uh oh, short-lived joy. Another attempt tried to load using the new viewer, and it failed with a blank section where the image should be. Using @Áine Ní Donnghaile's workaround to force the old viewer by removing the parameters from the URL got it to load OK in the old viewer.
0 -
Took me awhile to find this subject (new image viewer), but thank you for the workaround URL hint. It will be an exclusive use for me.
But I can’t seem to find the “Tool” icon that adjusts brightness and contrast. Am I just missing it on the screen, or is it just not there? I use this tool on most digitized old microfilmed records, just for legibility.
If I’m commenting in the wrong section to get direction or an answer, please let me know, as this Community feature is overwhelming to me. Drilling down to get to the correct section for a comment or question is simply overwhelming. So, thank you in advance.
1 -
@GloriaHorrellKendallUdy, on the old viewer, Tools is at the far right, just below the gray stripe above the image.
On the new viewer/editor, it's the next-to-last mystery button at the top right of the image area. The tooltip on hover is "Toggle Controls".
These were both using the website on a laptop with a fairly wide screen; things may be different if your device has a narrow screen and/or you're using the app (which I've never done, and have no plans to try).
2
