* FH6 First Impressions

[DavidNewton]

Just installed FH6 and after using it for about 10 mins (have to leave the computer now) I find the list filtering a huge improvement and that alone is worth the upgrade price.

David

[johnmorrisoniom]

Just installed V6 (Been trying to get it since 6:30 this morning.)

Why is it priced in Dollars?

Mike's Backup & restore plugin v2.2 does not appear in the plugin store.

Check installed plugins v2.4 does not do any updating, but maually install v2.5 and I get loads of errors and no updating.

[cramphorn]

i have just installed version 6 30 day trial map looks useful but there is a marker in wales labelled Guildford W. Australia

looks a bit out of place !!!!!

[tatewise]

Please be patient with Plugins as many need updating for today's new FH V6 Release version.

That is why mine are not in the Plugin Store and your old FH V5 versions may NOT work correctly with FH V6.
I have not yet got the FH V6 Release version to check them out.

Likewise, Jane's Check Installed Plugins V2.5 may need tweaking for today's new FH V6 Release version.

[tatewise]

The geocoding service being used by FH V6 is not yet as good as say Google Maps, but its licence charge is a lot cheaper, and so the FH V6 licence is still very reasonable.

Wait until Calico Pie have got over the initial days of the new release and then report any issues with geocoding.

[Valkrider]

It is easy enough to edit the pointers, I had some for the Channel Islands in the middle of the English Channel.

One gripe is that I wish websites (like the new FH one) did not make assumptions about your language or currency dependant on your IP address. Or if they do then allow some method of changing them. I did not want to pay for my V6 upgrade in Euros I wanted to use my UK PayPal account and not get hit with the fees for Euro to £ conversion. Moan over.

Very pleased at the moment with my initial experimentation with V6 on my PC now to see about getting it running under Crossover on my Mac laptop.

[tatewise]

Regarding geocoding, I planning to update my Map Life Facts Plugin to work with FH Place Records such that Plugin Google Geocoded Latitude/Longitude can update the Place Lat/Long details.

[LornaCraig]

It is easy enough to edit the pointers, I had some for the Channel Islands in the middle of the English Channel..

I recommend using Preferences>Map Window and selecting Block Refresh for Non-Tentative Geocodes. This means that after you have manually adjusted any markers that were in the wrong place they will not be changed again if you refresh the auto-geocoding.

[bgriffiths]

It is easy enough to edit the pointers, I had some for the Channel Islands in the middle of the English Channel.

It is indeed - was a bit miffed when it placed Liverpool about 25 miles to the north

Am now working my way through nearly 2000 placenames (including churches, which I DO treat as places so that they can be geocoded)

BrianG

[jmurphy]

Well, I've done it. I bought and installed V6. Didn't even think of the problem with the plugins not being compatible!

Now I am exploring things and discovering features that I know were also in the earlier versions but I had forgotten about. I think I need to start over and take a tour.

I'm using this as an opportunity to start a complete reboot of my research. I have older GEDCOM files which I'm using for reference if needed, but starting today I plan to do things better and to document things properly. We'll see if the good intentions last more than a day.

[steve steve s]

Anyone else having trouble accessing FH website at the moment?

[hwillk]

Yes - it appears to have crashed.

[PeterR]

Working fine now!

[jmurphy]

I had no trouble downloading, but couldn't get to the 'what's new' page for a couple of hours.

It seems to be working again now:
http://www.family-historian.co.uk/featu ... -version-6

I am impressed with the extended timeline features! I use an online tree on Ancestry as a sort of extended Ancestry shoebox, to keep track of what I have looked at there. I've often added notes to someone's profile when other family members have died. It is fantastic to have this as a feature we can toggle on and off in Family Historian.

Since Auto-Source Citation is the "killer feature" that drew me to Family Historian in the first place, I am keen to explore the new Automatic Source Citation Pane.

I have played around a bit with the Web Search Window. I have a section of my bookmarks in Firefox especially for the search pages of the different websites I use, but since I don't spend enough effort keeping it tidy, it is a bit chaotic at the moment. The thought of being able to take these bookmarks and store them in Family Historian itself makes me very happy. I may want to launch them in Firefox anyway, but it is great to be able to have a choice between doing that or opening them up in the web pane.

Obviously the Unicode support is HUGE. There are many people who turned their noses up at the idea of using FH because there was no Unicode support.

I see many interesting things hiding behind the "Enhancements for Power-Users" like ‘Contextual Data Reference’ and the ability to use Expressions in the sentence templates.

A side bonus is being able to get the records and SmartMatching from My Heritage without giving them a copy of my data. I expect that many of the matches will be data which I have already collected, but in a perverse way, that's reassuring -- if I don't get any other matches except for what I already have, that will be less of a temptation to spring for a data subscription to My Heritage.

All in all, I am very happy to have this new version.

[craigmollekin]

I love it so far. It looks smooth and I love the subtle changes to the icons and text etc.

Adding media directly into Places is unbelievably handy, as is the lat./long. feature. This will save me hours of time. I’ve only used it briefly, but the maps look superb and detailed. I never really got the hang of the mapping plugins and I was a little sceptical about this new feature of FH6, but it’s exceeded all of my expectations and is better than any previous standalone mapping software that I’ve used. I just need to practise now at fine tuning it to display exactly what I want it to. Previously I stored lat./long. in the address field of a place. I would have liked to have been able to see the coordinates somewhere in the facts tab of an individual but this is no big issue, assuming that the coordinates could be outputted into a report using a query if needed? I like the tentative/un-tentative marking system.

I love the new relationship diagram also, where it is possible to just see direct relationships between two people on a chart. I was moaning about this lacking feature only a few weeks ago. I’ve actually just printed such a chart off already which I’ll be showing somebody later.

The quick ‘add fact’ function is also very useful and will save time.

I’ve yet to use FH6 to generate my websites. I would have liked to have seen additional function to the website generation feature, but I’m guessing this feature isn’t used as much as it used to be, with the advent of PHP scripts etc.

However, I would have liked would have been able to add media to notes. I would also have liked to have been able to bullet point facts for individuals within narrative reports etc, instead of having everything squashed into one long wall of text paragraph.

But, so far, so good. Well done to everybody involved in creating version 6. Viva Family Historian.

[Jane]

Craig, you can now add newlines and new paragraphs to Fact Type Sentence templates, so you can more easily space out narrative reports.

[craigmollekin]

Cool, it just keeps getting better

[PJD]

Loving the Update. So many little improvements that just make the version seem so much better. I know I am going to end up playing with the Places and mapping.

And the timescale on the map. Within sections of trying that out with all the individuals in my tree it answered a question I have always wanted to know. I could see how the member spread out over the country in a very short period of time, mid 1800. I am so going to have fun with that.

As everyone else has said the geotagging is a little wonky. Put Quebec in alaska, a Canada in the middle of the USA and a lost at sea just south of Miami.

Anyway nice work... now how did my grand uncle in the First world war who died in France end up in Peru....

PJD

[jmurphy]

I got a location for a birthplace for "other" but the system was stumped by my test-GEDCOM, downloaded from Ancestry, which had a birth event with a place "Unknown Nativity". Or maybe I should say, it worked beautifully, not trying to place a pin when the birth place was unknown.

At any rate, hiccups like "other" in the place name field are why I prefer to tuck Ancestry's "transcriptions" away in a note and enter the information by hand.