Family Tree Maker 2008 Beta
Monday July 16, 2007
I've been taking the new Family Tree Maker 2008 beta software for a test drive and thought I'd share my thoughts. This is pretty much a complete re-write of FTM, so the developers have publicly released the beta version about a month early so they can collect a wide variety of user feedback to help them tweak the program in advance of its release.
- The download and installation went smoothly, although it was a bit longer than I expected. It's a very large program at 164MB and will take a while, even via DSL or cable modem. The final version will probably not be as large, but this beta version still contains extra debugging code which has inflated the size. My first impression at the first screen was that it looked way to much like all of the Web sites in The Generations Network, but that's a minor point. A lot of people actually use FTM because of its tight Internet integration, so this is just another step in that direction, I guess.
- File installation took some time as well. Everything was easy with a small, simple gedcom file, but when I entered my own family gedcom with 8,000+ names, it took several minutes and generated over 1,000 errors. Gasp! Turns out most of them were unknown GEDCOM tags from my RootsMagic file, so that wasn't a problem. A few double dates it didn't like, and about a half-dozen places it choked on, but that's it. Not too bad.
- There is a lot of information displayed on screen at once in FTM 2008. Some people will consider this a plus, as you can see both the family view and pedigree view, as well as the individual edit screen in one shot. Personally, I don't usually feel the need to see the overall pedigree view, and wouldn't mind a screen that's less busy. Luckily for me, I found I could drag the various window panes around until I found a configuration that worked well for me. I also really liked that I could easily customize the individual edit screen to include other events that I use frequently, such as baptism, burial, occupation and immigration. The program seems to remember the screen layout changes from file to file, but I had to re-do the "customize view" on the individual data entry pane for each family tree I imported. Once I played around with the setup, however, I really liked being able to see and enter so much information on one screen without popup windows or changing tabs.
- Notes and sources show improvement over previous version. There are multiple note fields for each individual and fact, and notes can be made private on an individual basis. If you don't see the notes feature next to facts in the individual person's information pane (on the right-hand side), then you may need to go to Tools -> Options to turn this feature on (it wasn't set this way as the default in the version I downloaded). On the source tab, you can view sources by individual, and there is a pane on the bottom which displays other people for which this same source was used. You can also enter sources for each individual fact and event, attach a photo or document to the source, as well as notes.
- The book feature is not yet active, although it appears from the beta version that the only option may be to upload the content to AncestryPress (also still in beta). This is basically a personal publishing service that helps you create nicely designed pages from the records, photos, and documents in your family tree, and then print them out. A professional book printing and binding service is supposed to be available shortly. The downside to this feature is that it requires online integration. I like it as an option, but don't feel that it should be the only option. As members of my genealogical society often remind me, not everyone is online. But maybe that's just a feature that's coming and hasn't been added yet. Most charts and reports are similar to what was offered in recent versions. The Custom Report option ended up hanging the program with my large test database, however.
- A lot of people will probably enjoy the place authority option which includes a long list of place names from around the world. All non-standardized place names in your family tree which aren't recognized are marked with a little symbol that takes you to the Place Authority screen. Here you'll be presented with the most likely match and asked if you want to accept. I chose to turn this feature off, however. The reason for this is personal. I like to use the term "county" after the county name in the database. Probably because I do research in a lot of countries and just like to be as specific as possible. The place authority chooses not to include the word "county" after the county name. It's a matter of personal preference, but since there appears to be no way to override this, I just turned the feature off.
This is just my first look at the program and is in no way a full review. Several features are not yet implemented in this beta version, and I haven't had time to give it a full workout yet. The best way to get your own feel for the program is to download and try the beta for yourself. I don't yet know if The Generations Network plans to release a trial version of this software, so this could be your only chance to get a good look at the program without purchasing it.
I'd like to know your thoughts on this new look for the venerable FTM as well, so please click on "comments" below and tell us what you think!
Updated on Tuesday, July 17 to add:
Kathi Reid over at AncestorSearch has a lot of great in-depth comments on her beta testing of Family Tree Maker 2008. Thanks to Randy Seaver for pointing this out! There is also some good discussion of the program over at the FTM-TECH list on RootsWeb.
Comments
does FTM 2008 have a fully customizable report mechanism? not canned reports with certain fields?
While I have not yet seen the beta for Family Tree Maker I found your review to be informative. It does seem to further confirm feelings I have had for some time about the program.
Until one month ago, Family Tree Maker was the only genealogical program that I have used. After several years of research my data base now includes over 5,900 names. Often I have had feelings that Family Tree Maker was lacking features but out of inertia I continued to use the program. Aside from the mechanics of the program it was always my feeling that they wanted to get their hands on my data. Rightly or wrongly I have felt their purpose was to fill the gaps in their database in order that they could later sell it in one form or another. Perhaps this is an unfair assessment. Also I have never been too impressed with their on-line help.
While to some degree I miss F.T.M.’s “clean” screen format with its easy data entry, I have found Roots Magic to be so much better. After using the program for one month I am very impressed. From the swift import of my file, to the rapid creation of books and shareable disks it is very impressive. No program is perfect but my observation is Roots Magic will make improvements and I get the feeling that my data will not be appropriated.
C. Christopher Sirr
440 Diamond Hill Road
Warwick
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations 02886
401-737-7564
sirr007@verizon.net
I upgraded in the past to FTM 2005. Then a while ago I got solicitations for FTM 16. OK, they’ve changed the numbering series, but it’s been long enough I should probably get it. So I gave them my money. It came in a cardboard folder, a CD and a brief folder. Ran it, didn’t see any difference, Figured I’d been taken. One less company to trust as a default. I won’t trust them again until I see proof the program is much better with significant new features, or old implementations significantly improved. I won’t buy the new one until at least a year after it comes out. If ever!
Re: “Roots Magic”
“My favorite for the best all-around program” - Kimberly Powell, About.com Genealogy Guide
I suggest you Google and check them out.
I am way behind - v. 4.0a. How scary is it that I want to jump on this, many versions later to take advantag of new features? Opinions? Warnings? Encouragement? Anything.
Thanks, Dick
I have found FTM 16 to be a terrific program, much better than FTM 2005. The Beta version offers a new look, new coding, and some great new features, but has dropped some of the old favorites (such as Books) and (so far) is incorporating some changes when databases are imported that are undesirable. I think they are still making improvements, and they may find they have to delay the release due to the feedback from the public beta testing–which is unique and a great idea!
In addition to your column, today’s email contained a advertisement for the new FTM version with delivery stated as mid-August. As a professional software engineer, I know that it is impossible to make any changes in the software so close to release. They would have had to ‘freeze’ the software before now in order to complete final testing and perform the initial production run. Therefore, the “Beta version” has to actually be the final version and is being released for marketing purposes only (and not for the stated test purposes).
the new technology needed doing,
but for data entry of families from census FTM 16, and for old eyes, is a better GUI
mangement of modern place names via maps.live.com and editing and managing sources is much better
export to older editons of FTM is not supported in the beta
Hugh W
I’ve been playing around with FTM 2008 beta, and, while I like the looks and navigation of the new program, I have found a couple of problems.
First, every time I’ve tried to “Resolve Place Names”, the program locks up. I’ve tried this at least 4 times.
I also prefer to do my city, county, state in a different format (Indianapolis, Marion Co., IN) than what FTM 2008 prefers. But I guess it’s probably best to be standardized to the rest of the genealogy world.
The thing I find most annoying is that, unless a name in the pedigree view has a ‘leaf’ after it, I can’t do an Ancestry.com search on that person. Maybe there’s a trick I don’t know. In my opinion the ability to do a click and immediately link up to Ancestry.com is a big plus to the current version of FTM.
In summary, at this point I’m not willing to jump on the 2008 bandwagon.
Kathi at the Ancestor Search blog has been testing FTM 2008 and has many keen observations. Go to http://ancestorsearch.blogspot.com/2007/07/family-tree-maker-2008-beta-additional.html and check out her comments.
I noticed under PUBLISH in the Family Tree Maker 2008 BETA that under TYPES, they do NOT include publishing to the web. I would think it would only make perfect sense to incorporate that as an option, at least for those of us (like me) who use Ancestry’s own MyFamily.com website to host their family history on. Especially now, since MyFamily 2.0 is in BETA (I am one of those testing it) - to be able to export directly from FTM 2008 to MyFamily 2.0 would be the perfect solution for me, since I am not interested in printing a traditional book, but rather having an online, dynamic family history website…
I have FTM and have used it. As of this time I have throwen it in the trash pile. Ancestral Quest is so much better in all phases that I use it all the time. I have over 46 thousand names in my database at this time and am adding mor almost every day. Along with PAF 5.8 it is the only one that puts all Mormon data in the proper places the proper way. Sorry FTM you don’t even come close to making the grade.
At first I thought the main screen was too busy but have moved things around and think it is ok.
The program needs a fast processor and a lot of ram I have a 1.5 gig and 1 gig of ram and am running XP Pro.
I have not seen anyone using a moderatley large file I tested with 400 4000 and 35,000, as the number of individuals in the database increases the time to generate a report really increases. With the 4000 person database an outline descendant report in V 16 that took 12 seconds and was 31 pages long in 2008 took 51 seconds and was 33 pages long. Larger reports that in V 16 take 30 seconds or a minute can take 5 to 15 minutes in 2008. Some reports either will take many hours or the program hangs up I have let it run all night on an all in one tree that took FTM 16 about a half hour. Possibly the release version will be much faster.
I will be getting it and hoping for the best.
Bill Lewis
FTM 2008 promo materials are not correct in stating it is the “familiar” FTM product with a new look. Anyone interested should look in the beta for these items. I happen to think the new working screen is very unnecessarily cluttered with few visual aid options.
Missing charts/reports
1. Books
2. All in one tree
3. Hourglass tree
4. Alternate facts report
5. Data Errors report and a way to search for data errors as in “edit,
find error”
6. Calendar
7. Mailing labels and cards
8. Birthdays of living individuals report
9. Medical information report
10. Address report
11. Vertical ancestor chart
12. Ancestor fan chart
13. Descendant fan chart
14. Genealogy reports
Missing features from chart/reports
Descendant charts
1. Footer info including date and time
2. Inclusion of sources
3. Formatting of individual Facts text
4. Option to include field labels of empty fields
5. Option to include line break between date and place data
6. No option to use overlap pages for charts
Ancestor charts
1. Inclusion of sources
2. Same box options as provided in Descendant charts
3. Movable boxes in Ancestor tree (aka Pedigree)
4. Formatting of individual Facts text
5. Option to include field labels of empty fields
6. Option to include line break between date and place data
7. Option to include line break between date and place data
8. No option to use overlap pages for charts
Outline Descendant reports
1. Footer info, including date and time (partly helped by Include preparer
information though no control over how this is formatted)
2. Items to include
3. Sources
4. Outline Descendant Tree is missing the bracketed numbers to indicate
duplicate people (is this still true?
5. Outline Descendant Tree is missing the “Second wife of —— ” that used to print before a second wife listing
Other
1. Kinship report only shows one relationship when there may be others
2. Saved Views
3. Sorting the custom report by any field
4. Double clicking on individuals in charts to go to their page for editing
File management
1. Copy/Paste individuals from one file to another
2. Copy/Paste Source citation
3. F key functions
4. Import Gedcom - items to import option
5. Global Search and Replace
6. Choice of using metric system
7. Creating a Family Homepage and is there a way to access and update the
page one already has.
8. Searching Data CDs
9. Export file to earlier versions
10. No control over source data when importing from Ancestry databases.
11. Display of AKA or married names in the index.
Sandra summarized a lot of the issues and I suspect there will be a lot of angry people who purchase without evaluating the Beta. Today, customer service informed me that the developers were not able to develop the ancestry reports in time to include them in August FTM 2008 but will be in later versions. Also, the book functions will be available only through uploading data and using the Ancestry Press feature which based on the Beta is totally inadequate for anyones publishing purposes. There is a lot of stuff “coming soon”. Reporting is a key core function of any genealogy software and omitting the genealogy reports and not providing the same features in other reports is unforgivable.
After expressing my concern about uploading data and Ancestry having rights to it, customer service said you can privitize it and delete the gedcoms. However, in submitting a gedcom with 10 people, there is an agreement box to be checked that “Ancestry may reproduce, compile, and distribute, all information about non-living individuals in your submitted GEDCOM file” and with regards to living individuals (if you are publishing for family you want living information), “Ancestry will make reasonable efforts to hide all information about living individuals…” Not too comforting when there is so much identity theft out there. When I’m creating a publication for family, I do not want to privatize it so in my mind, the online publication is out. Uploading just 8 people and generating a couple 1 page reports took far longer than creating a genealogy report with hundreds of people and with the flexibility to transfer it to a word processing tool where I have greater editing and formatting capabilities.
There are some positive things about the new interface but I found data entry to be extremely awkward compared to FTM v. 16. I would suggest that the index be available in the left frame that can be hidden: the family view similar to FTM 16 be in the middle for data entry and the right frame be available for customization with additional data entry fields. I never used the pedigree view for entry in FTM 16 but appreciated its avaialbity. It doesn’t need to take up space though. For those who like the pedigree entry option, maybe the middle screen can be a choice of pedigree or family view data entry.
Anyway, no way will I upgrade and I’m holding out hope that The Genealogy Network executives will see the errors of their ways and come out with a good product next round.
I am a heavy researcher with a database of over 16K names. This new software is a dog. It takes up 174K of memory, is unstable (three crashes in one hour) and requires much more time to enter facts. When entering census data, after inputting the year and hitting tab to move to the next field, the software locks up and then uses 48 to 52 percent of the processing power (with a 3.2 Ghz processor) for up to a minute. Mis-typing and hitting the backspace key causes the same thing to happen. After being a loyal FTM user for over 10 years, I regret to say that I won’t use this software until it is fixed.
Like Sandra, I also complained to Ancestry.com about screwing around with the Kinship Report feature. I have many, many branches which overlap, and are related to me on 3 or more different branches. Luckily I did not delete my previous version of FTM. At least it still has this feature.
Ancestry, you are supposed to improve versions, not take things out that obviously work.