Improving on the super-duper pedigree viewer

[mkmurray]

Hey Dan, great to see you here. I've been following your blog and left comments in the past (usually under Anonymous since it seem too much effort to put my name in there.)

P.S. What are you going to name your blog when you girl gets old enough to realize where the name comes from and goes Dadieeeeeeeeeee!!!

I'm having trouble following where the name comes from. Perhaps it's a joke from his blog?

[russellhltn]

I'm having trouble following where the name comes from. Perhaps it's a joke from his blog?

Go to his blog and then scroll all the way down on the right hand column until you see the photo.

[eatslikeahuman-p40]

P.S. What are you going to name your blog when you girl gets old enough to realize where the name comes from and goes Dadieeeeeeeeeee!!!

Yikes! I hadn't thought of that.

[huffkw]

Being a user who always wants more, I would say it would be nice to have both options, the compacted and the full view, mentioned above. I’m not sure what the animation addition means in the compacted case. But if it means getting a little “radar” view of where you are in the larger pedigree, just like the broad radar view in many of today’s computer and game console games, then it sounds like a good idea, and one that could be used on the full version as well. Something like the newspaper maps that show a large scale map with a blown up section pulled out for closer study.

I assume many GEDCOMs tend to be skewed in the direction of the main surname, so that either viewer may give similar results in such a case.

I did a little prototype/mockup of a full 3-D version of a genealogy viewer that took one person as the center point and attached all relatives -- up, down, and sideways (in-laws) – for about 3 or 4 generations in all directions. Obviously it filled up the screen with people rather quickly, but it did show you all the people who are close to each other, and who would typically be found in the pictures of family and extended family. That is where the most interesting family history would probably be grouped for any member of such a group. Whatever multimedia information was available would appear in a pull-down menu attached to each person on the screen.

Some kind of logarithmic adjustment to better include and display this mass of people was an idea that never occurred to me. But there is another task for some ambitious soul to tackle. Then we would have three fancy viewers!

Whatever happened to the rotatable “bush” 3-D viewer that someone at BYU did, and demonstrated at a conference? That at least cut in half or thirds the number of family lines displayed, without losing context. And then there is the OneGreatFamily version of a pedigree viewer. Hmmm. I want them all.

[russellhltn]

I’m not sure what the animation addition means in the compacted case.

I think what he's saying is how you flow from screen A to screen B matters just as much as Screen A and Screen B themselves. Just guessing here, but if for example you jump, people have to re-orient themselves. If you "flow" to say the parent, then the user completely understands what's going on without having to have extra clues from the static portion of the display. Watching how things in the margin changes, they'll understand what the compacted shorthand means.