Color code relationships

W Andrews

Please consider this color code so we can quickly know these types of relationship:

Black: no relationship

Green: Direct line ancestor or descendant

Orange: Indirect ancestor or descendant (cousin)

Blue: In-law of my ancestor or descendant

Yellow: In-law of my spouse’s ancestor or descendant

White: not specified - beyond x generations

The color could be an icon next to the name similar to the colored icon next to “ordinance.”

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I seriously doubt such a thing is at all feasible on the shared tree, for many reasons.

First and perhaps foremost, color by itself is a highly undesirable interface choice, due to colorblind (or straight-up blind) users.

Second and perhaps technically foremost, how would the system determine those classifications? Would it need to run the "show relationship" algorithm before loading each and every person on each and every chart view, profile page, search result, and so on? That would likely slow the site to unusability, or possibly just crash the system due to computational load: there are over a billion profiles in the shared Tree. (A billion is a very, very large number. One billion seconds is over thirty years.)

Áine Ní Donnghaile

Color coding is possible on genealogy desktop software (such as Family Tree Maker) and on MyHeritage but, even then, it doesn't specify a relationship to the root person. The color coding usually helps to follow a specific branch, not the relationship between individuals.