View images on phone or tablet
Is there a trick to be able to zoom, and drag, the images of historical records on FamilySearch?
For several years, possibly the whole life of the website, I have noticed this doesn’t work with touch controls for me. I just move to my desktop or laptop to view records then.
However, my mom only does what she can do on her iPad. She loves genealogy but if something doesn’t work right like viewing images she just won’t do it. She’s a 1 or 2 on the tech savvy scale of 1 to 10. If something asks her to enter a password or reset one I usually have to do it for her. She asks me almost every time she wants a link to some collection because she cannot keep track of her links or emails. But she has a strong testimony and is dedicated to this work. These are the types of patrons design needs to account for and the image viewer not allowing zooming or dragging in mobile is just one small issue that keeps such people from doing research. Maybe I’m overlooking a work around but it should be easy for everyone and it isn’t. It isn’t just me is it? Does anyone else find you cannot zoom or drag images with touch controls? By the way, I find some online image viewers do allow this, but just not on FamilySearch.
Answers
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@Michael W. McCormick on your mother's iPad, are you/is she using the FamilySearch App or accessing FamilySearch using a browser?
I'm not an iPad user, but the usual way to zoom on any touchscreen is the 2-finger approach - moving the 2 fingers farther apart zooms in on the image. I just tested it on my Android tablet, using a browser, and it worked as expected.
(brief pause while I open the FS App on my tablet)
The same 2-finger motion zooms in on the image using the FS App.
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I don’t know why it wouldn’t work for me. I’ve had trouble with it on FamilySearch for years and still have this year. I know multiple ways to do it with other sites. Usually it is either a single finger to drag or two fingers to drag on other sites. I cannot get either to work. It responds a little to zoom or move, but if I try to zoom and then drag to position and see a specific part of the image and move it to see it I have the image act jumpy and cannot get to see where I need. This has happened repeatedly for me just on FamilySearch for years and not other sites.
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Then maybe it is the browser or the tablet, not the website.
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I find that on iPad with the latest version of iPadOS and Safari, that once I bring up a document image I can’t zoom in. However, reloading the web page makes zooming possible. This only applies to images with the “old” image viewer; this problem doesn’t occur with the new viewer.
I’m using the web page on iPad, not the app.
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