Help! I hate new format!

LegacyUser

Pamela June Jones said: I just opened my Family Search and half of my pages are correct and the new ones I have opened in the last few minutes are on a different format! It is very hard to read and to navigate! Please do not change things that are working the way they are! Please bring my old format back! I don't know if I can work with this format.

LegacyUser

m said: 2nd this. Please bring old format back.

LegacyUser

J. Thompson said: I'll get used to the new layout with time.

But what I'll always miss most is having all the sources listed together on the main person page, without having to click back and forth between the Details tab and the Sources tab to compare. (This change in particular feels like a betrayal to me. By putting sources behind additional mouse clicks, it feels like it's downplaying their importance.)

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Moreover -- I've spent the last 10 years 'tagging' records with links to data that identifies who the record belongs to. I was inspired in the old system to put this data in the Discussions field.

I have been updating these with more information. I just ran into one that was transferred from the old system and is now tagged as being submitted by support which means -- I HAVE NO ACCESS TO UPDATE MY OWN discussion.

This is NOT acceptable.

Who tested this with REAL users?

LegacyUser

m said: 2nd this. I have no access to update my own discussions.

This is 100 % NOT acceptable.

Plus my discussions are no longer mine - the contributor is now Familysearch.

People contact me all the time to ask for more information. They find me through my discussions. Now they will not know who made the discussion and so they will not be able to contact me.

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Worse, I just went to compare 2 (often there are duplicates due to merges) and I couldn't get more than one open at a time.

LegacyUser

J. Thompson said: Yeah I think that's probably a bug. It might just be temporary as things switch over to the new layout, or it might be something they have to fix in the coming weeks.

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: All this effort to change something that was working and NOTHING was done to the layout of the change log, which we've been begging to have condensed ever since it was first released.

Why can't the people who spend the most time on this system (and give up a LOT of personal time while household chores go undone) be helped to shorten the time they have to spend on the system MANAGING it -- it's NOT self-managing, someone has to do the work.

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Rolling through various dimensions to 'test' the system (again, had I been managing the test -- ALL of these routines would have been checked).

Recommendations cannot be dismissed. This is critical to remove annoying warnings that are not valid. The 'standardized' checks are a joke. We have no input to them -- there are so many valid locations missing and so many that show up that are invalid.

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Clearly there's a performance bug somewhere because page refreshes are lagging.

LegacyUser

H. Alan Reid said: Me too! Please bring back the format that was working so well.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: So it does appear that there are a few problems with the new format:

1. Whoever wrote the code to bring up the standard place matches needs to go back and refactor that code. It is not bringing up anything like all of the correct matches. For example type Farnham, Surrey, England, United Kingdom in as a standard place and it brings up two options; either the hundred from 1801 to the present or the parish up to 1801 with the standard name of Farnham, Surrey, England: WRONG. Farnham, Surrey, England, United Kingdom as a string in the standard places database is either a hundred, a registration district (which in and of itself is the wrong hierarchy and upon which I have written an extensive post in other feedback threads, a town (for which there appears to be a duplicate entry in the place database) or a poor law union. Typing in that string should bring up ALL of the exact matches, not just the one for the hundred. Oh and hundreds are completely obsolete administrative units.
2. The loss of the ability to move various elements of the page about for customisation of the layout is unfortunate and should be restored.
3. If the point about discussion ownership being reassigned is true then I agree it is completely unacceptable. If it is an artifact of moving over to the new layout then whoever created the workflow such that this occurred was extremely incompetent.
4. The bug with the ordinances link showing up for non-LDS in the memories portion of the profile is still there. Clicking on that link takes a non-LDS person back to the main details part of the profile, but the link should not even be showing up. I reported this as a bug back when this was in beta. It is unacceptable that this was not fixed.
5. The top of the page no longer remains in place when scrolling down so that too much extra movement is required to change tabs. This functionality was present at one point in the beta and it is unclear why it was taken out.
6. The text in the fact editing windows, and indeed in a number of other places is extremely blurry. I have good eyesight so what it must be like for those who don't beggars belief.

Overall there are a lot of people hyperventilating over this: "HATE< HATE< HATE"??!! Yeah that's constructive. However there are some significant issues that need resolving. I have outlined six of those issues above.

Finally I would like to highlight that again: NO WARNING WAS GIVEN THAT THIS RELEASE WOULD HAPPEN; NO RELEASE NOTES HAVE BEEN PUT OUT FOR IT; WE ONLY FOUND OUT ABOUT IT ON THE BETA SITE THROUGH CHANCE.

The change management associated with this has been abominable. Why was there no warning of the release happening? Why have no release notes been put out? Oh and saying that there isn't the resourcing to write them is not a valid excuse since if necessary the release could have been delayed for a few days to write them. Why was this being on the beta site not better signposted? These are fundamental questions that need to be answered, both for our benefit and for better internal processes at Familysearch.

I also see that no one has tackled the abysmal standard search parameters problem yet either.

We will see an awful lot of traffic and threads about this in the next few hours and days. Hopefully some useful feedback can be pulled out of what will have a lot of noise and little constructive information unfortunately.

LegacyUser

JoAnne Hunt said: I agree

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Huge IMPACT: I navigate between people by copy/paste the PID. That is NO LONGER possible in Chrome. Now I have to write it down and enter it (e.g. adding a spouse already showing elsewhere, doing a find, etc.)

LegacyUser

Alex Sellers said: You can click on it and it pulls up a "Copy ID" thing, but I agree its annoying

LegacyUser

Robert Bremer said: I don't normally post here because it seems pointless, but in this case-- History is no longer accessible under individual events. So, if you deal with constantly correcting edits made by others based on speculative secondary sources, it's now more difficult to determine the last version of an event in order to flip it back to what it was. Putting the notes and discussions on a collaborate tab means they are less likely to be read than was the case before. Explanations in those discussions often head off incorrect edits by explaining how this or that relationship or event has been disproved. If that information is not readily visible, it's even easier to mess up valid data, and now even harder to change it back. Most of my time spent on Family Tree is fixing the untrue, incorrect, and unsupported edits made by other well-intentioned users. It seems like quality should matter and the design should support that, but the new design does not.

LegacyUser

Alex Sellers said: I believe there is a consensus from the users that the new page is not ready for live use

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Another broken routine: Individually, children are attached to parents 9V1P-XHM and 9V1P-XHS. The parents are also separately attached to each other. But there is no scenario where they are ALL attached to each other. In the past, simply pasting the PID of one parent into the 'missing' line would resolve everything. Not the case now.

LegacyUser

JoAnne Hunt said: I liked the old format.

LegacyUser

JoAnne Hunt said: I don't like the new format, it is harder to look at the sources, too many clicks to get back to the research.

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: Legacy Disputes: Most of the legacy notes are no longer valid. Prior to this update we were able to delete these directly. This is no longer possible. This will significantly increase interaction with support (new cases). I do hope staff was increased by at least 1/3. I can delete up to 30-50 a day.

LegacyUser

JEB said: Missing "History" - why? As noted, the "History" often helps in sorting out duplicates, bad merges, etc. For example, I've had people change a name to a completely different person - both given and surname! "History" is very important to fixing problems.

LegacyUser

JEB said: Excellent point! I found it frustrating to be unable to delete "Discussions" that were no longer relevant or applicable.

LegacyUser

Cherie Gardner Rawlings said: Please bring it back!

LegacyUser

Alice Neff said: From the comments above, I am not sure whether I am see a Beta or a Live copy of Family Tree. But either way to take the Source, Discussions and Notes from the Person Page is a disservice. It appears that you are trying to make the computer version match the App. The App, as much as I appreciate the mobility is very cumbersome. I use it a lot, but for serious research the computer and website were so much easier. Please put the Sources on the Person Page it is such a burden to switch back and forth.

Thank you for not moving the Family to a separate tab.

Please, also, give us a heads-up when you make changes. I was helping a guest in the Family History Center, we looked up a record and came back and everything had changed. That is not fair. We were in the middle of unmerging a family and it was very upsetting. How can you do something like that at 3:30 in the afternoon in Salt Lake?

Please change it back.

LegacyUser

JEB said: My comments. Some have been noted by others.

1. Type on the page is too small. Yes, you can change it with your browser but that also changes type that may be fine on other web pages or tabs.

2. Missing "History" for information. "History" is VERY important in sorting errors, mistakes, etc. A critical element that is needed.

3. Unable to delete "Discussions" especially the "legacy" ones that are no longer or relevant.

4. Just tried to do a "search" by clicking on "Family Search" while on an individual's page. The "heading" on the search results showed another individual by same name with different PID! Yes, it is a different person with the same name too.

I'm afraid I'm going to find more such problems. Right now, I think it would be best to go back to the previous version. Yes, I know that somethings we can "get use to" but not those items that hinder research or correcting information.

LegacyUser

Chas Howell said: Missing the "history". It was one of the most helpful items.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Too many "Edit" on the page. It is saying, change me. Change me! Change me! Whether right or wrong, just change me!

LegacyUser

Juli said: Oh, lordy, the pop-up to edit conclusions is an ASININELY STUPID move. It makes the person's profile page totally unusable unless you have it open in multiple tabs so you can go find the effing date or placename or whatever. And then you have to keep track of which tab is which...

None of these things were apparent when I last looked at the Beta version. This needs another year of development work before any of it goes live.

PLEASE REVERT the changes. Repeat: the new interface is Not Ready For Prime Time, please revert the changes.

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: One Plus (so nice to find one). I regularly delete a LOT of legacy sources that have no real data in them. When bringing up multiple deletes, it retains the last reason I used - so I don't have to type it in over and over again.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: After all said and done I agree with this statement by Alice Neff, "It appears that you are trying to make the computer version match the App. The App, as much as I appreciate the mobility is very cumbersome. I use it a lot, but for serious research the computer and website were so much easier."