Over the last year we’ve been working on a better way to let you view your Ancestry.com.au member tree. We’ve built this new tree viewer based on feedback from members, extensive user testing and hours of development and design. We focused on finding ways to let you view more of your tree at once and hope that seeing more of your relatives in the new family view will help you see new family lines to start researching.
You can check out the new tree viewer by going to your Ancestry.com.au member tree and by clicking on a link in a blue banner at the top of the tree viewer or you can access it here. The first thing you’ll notice is the “What’s new” feature. You can move your cursor over the headings to see pop-up boxes highlighting some of the new changes. You can dismiss this at any time by clicking the ‘x’ to the right. Here’s a list of some of the other new things we’ve done to make it easier to view more of your tree.
More Generations in the Pedigree View – When there are more than 5 generations visible in any branch of your tree, you can click the arrow icon next to your 5th generation ancestor to expand another group of 4 generations. You can keep expanding until you run into that pesky brick wall.
Drag Your Tree Around the Screen – Now that you have so much more of your tree to look at, we’ve made it possible to simply hold down your mouse button and drag the background of your tree to move it around the screen without scrolling.
Larger Display Area – if you’re one of the lucky people with a larger monitor, we’ve made it so the tree view can expand the full width and height of your monitor.
Header changes
- Tree Pages – We’ve consolidated all the links to other tree pages to make them easier to find and give you more room to view your tree. Just hover over “Tree pages” in the header for quick access to these pages.
- Find a person in this tree – we’ve consolidated some other features to make more room. Hover over the “Find a person in this tree” search area to see the “Last person viewed” and the “List of all people” links.
Tool Bar
- Home person link – We’ve moved the home person link to the tool bar for quick access
- Re-centre the root person – Click the curved arrow icon to position the current root person in the vertical center of the screen and reset the zoom level
- Zoom – you can zoom in or out by clicking the plus or minus icons or by dragging the side bar.
- Print – We’ve moved the print button and made it possible to print more of your tree. If you have expanded branches of your tree in the pedigree view, you’ll be able to print all the viewable generations at once.
Mini Person Card – When you hover over a person in your tree, a mini-tree card appears. When you click the name of your person, you’ll be taken to that person’s overview page. If you want to see this person’s tree, click the link that says “View his/her family tree” and this will redraw the tree with the selected person in the root position of the tree.
New Family View – Now you can see your relatives in what we’re calling the family view. This view allows you to see up to 2 generations of descendants, up to 3 generations of ancestors and all the siblings of a selected person. It’s a great way to see your family grow when adding siblings, children, cousins, aunts and uncles.
We’re really excited to offer you these great new changes and hope to hear what you think about the new viewer. Once you’ve seen the new tree viewer and explored the changes, you can give us feedback by clicking the “Provide feedback” link in the new tree viewer.