Family Historian User Group

Having used FH since 2006, I am beginning to wonder how many registered users exist at this moment ?
In my time I have used Brothers keeper ,FTM 2012 and 2014, & Roots magic all versions .
I love FH and would consider myself an "average skill user". But the knowledge and ability of users is important.
I think the average user and beginners would have been happy to have a few "tweeks" bug fixes and generally tidying up.
From what I see at the moment the majority of my genealogical friends a fair percentage use FH as an entry system for storing Births marraiges deaths, censuses and other facts. Very few want to use Queries and all Plugins etc.
It surely would have been better to produce a "Basic package" and price and a professional package and price. This exists in many accounting packages.
With all the problems that are arising from the Version 7 most of these apply to professional users.
It would be nice to see what percentage of all users are really concerned with all of this innovation.
Just look at all the users of the FHUG and a large percentage of the contributors are always the same

In some respects I agree with you -- the most vocal users here at FHUG are predominantly 'power users' who (inevitably) have opinions to share about what they do and don't like in the new version, and/or about how they do things. But I can say confidently that they're the minority in the total number of users... a larger minority ask for help, but many more people read the forums and the KB and find the help they need without asking their own question.

With regards to 'average' users and 'beginners', there are a number of users I advise off the forums and mailing list who would definitely call themselves 'average' users -- many of them are delighted with formatted text; a different subset are looking forward to using Research Notes; a different subset are pleased to have a way of better way of structuring their sources. One gentleman is ecstatic that witness events can now be included in the reports he uses; another is extremely pleased to see sort dates and fact flags. They may not be writing their own plugins of custom queries, but all of them use a small number of plugins for specific tasks, and standard queries. Looking more widely there are users for whom the new support for languages other than English is very welcome.

I honestly can't see which of the new features I'd consign to a 'Basic' package, and which should be reserved for a 'Professional' package... Perhaps you should be advising your genealogical friends to remain with FH6 if they don't think the price of the upgrade is worthwhile?

Thank you Helen
It would have been nice before even announcing the V7 (a long while ago) that many bits and bugs fixes and wish list items could have introduced into V 6.27 say making 6.3 and that would have been just as capable of introducing more new users. Then later all the xtras could have been bundled with no wait for V7.
For my part I am sticking with V6.27 until all bugs etc have been fixed and all of the gurus satisfied.

I would class myself as a 'very very basic user'. Genealogy is for me a hobby and fairly low down in my list of hobbies. All I'm interested in is finding my direct ancestors - where & when they were born, were they lived & what they did for a living (& there children). BMD & Census data is reasonably easy to find and I have managed to get back 9 generations of my paternal line.
Do I use Sources & Citations? No I don't, I find them very confusing & complete gobble-dee-gook. I record BMD & census data and that's it. I record Census data in the notes field for the relevant Census.

I will now try and use 'Ancestral Sources' and see how I get on.

jsphillips wrote: ↑

30 Dec 2020 10:41

For my part I am sticking with V6.27 until ... all of the gurus satisfied.

The gurus will never be satisfied!

It can be quite entertaining sometimes watching the gurus arguing amongst themselves, so I don’t think consensus will come anytime soon....

Yes, as regards the idea of a FH-Essentials package, a serious comment is that the sheer plumbing effort required to keep the two in step can be considerable. All the configuration management, change control, bug-tracking, etc, etc, would need to be duplicated. Those aspects are 110% necessary - but no-one buys them.

Slightly more flippant is that it puts me in mind of the comments that 80% of MS Word users use only 20% of the facilities in Word (don't take the %s as anything like factual). The problem, they said, is that it's a different 20% for each....

Ah the good old Pareto (or 80/20) rule!

If I remember correctly, one of the original concepts of the Graphical Windows interface was to deliberately provide many ways to do the same thing to provide user choice; and also address at least some of the "accessibility issues" for those with physical impairments; and Windows software developers were 'actively encouraged' by Microsoft to support that approach. This is, of course, still confusing to many users who only want know how to "do it the the right way" and find a multiplicity of alternative methods daunting; but equally welcomed by those who demand the option of choosing their own preferred (graphical) method; or possibly even go completely the "old school" CP/M/UNIX/DOS method of Keyboard Shortcuts.

For me this goes all the way back to delivering Windows conversion training to staff who, having mastered Wordperfect and Lotus 123 for DOS, had to quickly adapt to Lotus Smartsuite/Microsoft Office for Windows. I still remember the mixed initial looks well when beginning to describe 5 ways of achieving the same outcome in Microsoft Word - some but often

Mervyn

I am beginning to regret upgrading to v7, I can't find anything, all the dropdown menus seem to have been chopped up and it takes me ages and far too many clicks to get to where I want to be (if I can actually find where the item I want has been hidden), even something as simple as attaching a commonly used source to a fact seems to take a lot longer. I usually work on a diagram which luckily doesn't seem to have changed very much. When I read the blurb for the upgrade I thought that the new research tools sounded useful, but so far I've been unable to locate anything so it's back to the 'To Do' list which isn't really what I wanted! Perhaps if a v7 book is published it might help, pressing F1 only helps if I have found what I am looking for!

Anyway enough of the grumbles, I do my research purely for my own pleasure and interest so I really like the fact that FH is UK authored and appreciate all the work that Simon Orde has put into the programme even if it isn't for the likes of me, I love being able to work in diagrams and seeing my tree grow, I like being able to attach heads from group photo's without using a different programme, I like seeing the relationship to the root person instantly without having to refresh anything and I like being able to see this in a diagram (I assume that I can still do that), there are several other things that I like, but I think that all of these things were available in the early versions and I would be quite happy to just have these basics back without all the bells and whistles that the power users find so useful.

Just my personal opinion, I shall continue to struggle on wishing for the good old days when FH was a simple programme that I could understand and actually use most of.

@Rusty, it's been said elsewhere, but have you read FH Help > Family Historian Help > What's New in Family Historian 7?
Among other things, Research Notes are listed there and you may discover other useful stuff too.
Just like when Microsoft reorganise menus, you will soon get used to the new arrangement.
However, the simple process of adding an existing generic Source to a Fact does need an extra click or two.

tatewise wrote: ↑

31 Dec 2020 15:50

@Rusty, it's been said elsewhere, but have you read FH Help > Family Historian Help > What's New in Family Historian 7?
Among other things, Research Notes are listed there and you may discover other useful stuff too.
Just like when Microsoft reorganise menus, you will soon get used to the new arrangement.
However, the simple process of adding an existing generic Source to a Fact does need an extra click or two.

Thank you Mike, I did read the 'What's New' section, that's where I discovered Research Notes, I'll have another read perhaps now that I've used the programme it will make more sense.