* Ancestry's 'new' hint system

[Johnr65]

Has anyone noticed that Ancestry has again messed up the hint system? Now you have to click on the hint which takes you to a panel on the RHS and you have to click on that to see the document or transcription. Even the transcription has been altered so as you can only see the source by pressing yet another button!
It seems that they want us to spend more time researching which will bring them in more money no doubt as it now takes 2 or 3 times as long to research a hint.
Why do they have to keep updating things that don't need them?

[Gowermick]

They think they’re helping
I think someone ought to go back to school, they way they have designed the interface!
You can’t overtype dates in a search, you have to delete the old date first then type the new one!! I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been caught out by that one.
You enter a persons birth date in a field, then up pops another field showing same date (giving you two fields on screen!) plus another field to insert place of birth.
I sometimes despair of what they teach these idiots in school, certainly not Human Interface standards

[jimlad68]

As ever, with so many products these days, everything is geared to small screen smart phones, tablets etc and laptop/PC users have to contend with less info per page and never ending button pressing to and fro instead of having all the info on 1 page.

There are still some PC friendly websites about, I find Geneanet very good
e.g. https://gw.geneanet.org/jimlad68
very similar to the old Rootsweb trees
you can quickly display everything about a person on one page, better than FH, so I sometimes use it as an adjunct to FH.

As good as many things are on Ancestry, I find their trees very cumbersome to navigate (have you tried to view text from source etc quickly?). I suspect it is geared up to making you dependant on their tree and not move elsewhere.

Mike, my comments above and yours are extra reasons to keep your "original" tree on something like FH and upload/copy elsewhere.

So many basically good software products ruined by bad user interfaces and missing simple functions. Don't get me going!!!!

[Gowermick]

Jim,
I only keep a tree on Ancestry for DNA matching purposes. I don’t edit it, and rarely update it. I keep my data firmly under my control, courtesy of FH and my PC. Personally, I wouldn’t dream of keeping and editing a tree on Ancestry. One is restricted by what tools Ancestry have provided, and judging by their search interface standards, not very good tools either I suspect!

[Johnr65]

I agree with you, Mike, Jim, and GowerMick, I have my tree on FH7 and on my pc as well as backed up to GoogleDrive. I upload a Gedcom from it about once a month to Ancestry as I too have a DNA test on there as well as FMP and Gedmatch Genesis.
I don't trust Ancestry with my research, it's bad enough regarding the 'new' hint and message systems which are a complete mess. They've obviously never heard the phrase 'if it ain't broke don't mend it!'

[gwilym'smum]

Hi
I agree with all of the above and a new look home page but more than anything which is making me increasingly to use FMP is that when you are on a census for example you press back and end up on the basic search page. I do think that Ancestry gives more census lists than FMP but having to remember to press page back rather than their back arrow is driving me mad. Plus if you are looking through the census pages round about to find relatives then you cannot use the page back so are dependent on their page back.
Ann

[Gowermick]

Ann,
A lot of the time, Ancestry opens up a new tab to display information, so there is nothing to go back to, it is already on the first page of the new tab! (Especially true when presenting you with a list of possible matching trees, when clicking on a tree opens a new tab)! You have to close the tab to get back to original listing of possible matching trees!

Other times, they seem to disable the back button of your browser, but a quick double click seems to get round this problem!

To get round this, when checking each result in a list, open it in a new tab (use right click to get the option). When finished, close the tab and you’re back to the same list again. You can repeat this for each result in the list, slowly working your way through them.

As I mentioned before, they are not consistent in their page design. i.e back arrow works only works on some pages; some pages open in a new window and overtyping only works on some fields and not others!

Sure way to confuse and upset your users is to be inconsistent!

[Mark1834]

I agree that the changes are not an enhancement, but I have found that when you are reviewing a hint, it is best to click on the source title, not the Review button. That opens the hint in the new side panel, but if you click on the source title again rather than the review button, it takes you to the full source details that we are used to seeing.

If you do it that way, it is just one extra click, and everything else is exactly the same as before (unless there are further changes if you accept the hint and add to your tree, but I never do that - my Ancestry tree is a read-only export from FH synced via RM).

[fhtess65]

I'm in the minority - I actually LIKE the new hinting system. Much easier and faster. But I've always been an outlier

Teresa

[AdrianBruce]

It took me ages to discover that there was a new hinting system because I (almost) always click on the Source title, not the Review button (as per Mark's practice).

However, I found one interesting improvement in the new system - the hinted date on (say) an England & Wales BMD index looks like July 1901 (say). This is actually Q2 1901, of course, but (unless you know better) I can't enter that, so I have to change the hinted date to 1901, use that and stick Q2 into the note for that item. This is a two stage process because the note wasn't available from the old compare and update screen.

But now, the advanced version of the new facility, with the Edit-All (?) set, will give access to the note on the compare and update screen, allowing me to do this all in one go.

(I'm describing this from memory so won't swear it's exactly, precisely right)

[brianlummis]

Sometimes the hints are really useful - I've just received an email suggesting that I might like to view a photo hint - it turned out to be an image with the words "Not researching this line"!

[Johnr65]

I put a review of Ancestry's new hint system on Trustpilot and Anc obviously didn't like it and replied accordingly but still haven't reverted. However if everyone else on here also does a similar review, maybe they'll change their minds?
https://uk.trustpilot.com/

[Johnr65]

Yes I have done that.