Family Historian User Group

Hi one and all,
I am currently researching all of the best genealogy software packages on offer for The Guardian, and was wondering if anyone would like to answer a few questions?

Why did you decide upon Family Historian as your package of choice?

What are your favourite things about the package and how is it superior to its competitors?

Any flaws or things that could be improved upon?

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kate

ID:2193

There's a review on Amazon that pretty much sums it up - good support, this web site, good graphics integration, UK package

One of the reasons that I decided on FH when looking for a software package was that FH was British and did not come with a load of useless extra CDs listing millions of American names that bear no relevance to my research. I have had FH since the first version and have no inclination to try any competitor. The support here, on the user forum and from Calico Pie is second to none.
My favourite thing with FH is probably the superb diagrams that it produces.

Peter E

I have tried 5 or 6 other family history programs. None are in the same class as Family Historian.  IF, and it is a big IF, I needed to use a facility in another package it is likely to read the GEDCOM file well enough without me having to actually transfer the information to the other program.  It is the only program I have come across, in 25 years as an IT professional, that allows me to make generic corrections for my typos in a database.  It is also the only program I have ever used where the developer listens to what the users want and then delivers it.  Try getting Microsoft to even acknowledge a comment.  This software grabbed my attention with its adherence to the GEDCOM standard and kept it with the spread and power of its facilities.  

The level of support from the user base and the developer is comparable to the Linux community and Open Source software.

kateabbott said:
Why did you decide upon Family Historian as your package of choice?

The reasons I originally went for Family Historian I think were:

I was impressed by its use of GEDCOM as native file format and as a programmer I could see some great possibilities for developing utilities that could work directly with this data if required.

The way that it was possible to draw a box around each person in a group photo and link to the individuals

The great support for recording and linking to sources.

The fact that it was British

What are your favourite things about the package and how is it superior to its competitors?

I soon learned that the user support on this website and on the mailing list is absolutely brilliant. Calico Pie programmer Simon Orde regularly answers questions and has added lots of extra features based on suggestions from users.

There have been several updates to Family Historian over the last few years and only one of them was charged for. These updates were not just bug-fixes but added many new features including the facility to edit sentence templates for events.

I'm really not trying to plug my own freeware product but the fact that Family Historian uses GEDCOM as its native format allowed me to develop a utility to enter census records. I used this to organise all my census records and 'Gedcom Census' is now also used by hundreds of Family Historian users. It would not have been possible for this to have been developed with the other family history software that I am aware of that use their own data formats. Other members of the Family Historian community have developed other utilities and this means that even some features that are missing from Family Historian at the moment can be worked around.

Any flaws or things that could be improved upon?

There are a few minor things but past experience shows that these will almost certainly appear in an update in the future.

To summarise, Family Historian is an excellent product and is highly recommended.

Why choose FH?

Because it had very good diagrams and charts, the main reason I bought it. It was good value for money with no useless bumpf. Clean and simple UI with a variety of methods of accessing the data. It's British so support should be good (which it is). This user group.

Favourite bits?

The use of named lists and record flags which allow categorisation, grouping, and many other tasks based on vague concepts which can't be handled by any other method is the main thing I like about FH. The record view, the diagrams, the handling of multimedia (with ability to crop photos), the many ways in which notes can be made, good support for adding sources to your data, not limiting the number of children or marriages (or even births or deaths, useful is you want to record different possible events), support for private notes.

Flaws?

It's a bit buggy in terms of UI issues (not in any serious way and it doesn't corrupt data), has a few inconsistencies, the reports could be more configurable (an over reliance on configuring the headings, but not much else), the query system is unique to say the least (doesn't use AND/OR/NOT), website creation is basic though well presented, and an over reliance on sticking to Gedcom which is a data transfer protocol not a database design (though by being Gedcom you can use other programs to manipulate your data because it is in textual format).

Thank you all for your responses- they're very informative and gratefully received. Any other responses are always welcome.

I'm confused by some of the lingo (ie what is UI?) but hopefully will work it out when I get started on FH making my own tree this afternoon.

Thank you
Kate

When I started researching my family history I used Family Tree Maker, as it seemed to have the highest profile in the various magazines I looked at at the time. However, It came with a collection of data CDs that were of no use to me (they contained US data), and I found its user interface very simplistic and almost gimicky.

Eventually I switched to Family Historian (FH), and was immediately impressed by the fact that you could almost edit the raw data - as a systems programmer by trade, I'm used to editing raw text files and find that user interfaces tend to get in the way of what I'm trying to do.

I also support a friend who also uses FH, but is not particularly computer literate. They tend to use the diagrams to add data, and have no interest in delving behind the graphical interface to edit things at a lower level. The fact that FH supports both methods (and several others) so well means that it caters for a wide selection of family historians.

It was only after I had been using FH for a while that I discovered this user group site (and the associated mailing list). The community spirit is very strong, and no matter how complex or silly you think your question is, there is always someone willing to help. And I should also make mention of the stirling work that Jane Taubman does in administering both this site and the mailing list, and her willingness to help others with her seemingly endless knowledge of FH and family history research.

Another plus is the fact that Simon Orde (FH's author) is a regular visitor to this site, and will answer technical questions about the software, and readily investigate anything that looks like it might be a bug. Calico Pie listens to the wishes of their user-base, and incorporates many of the requested changes in new releases.

On the downside, the website and CD creation facilities have only been introduced recently, and need a few more additions before they become as mature as the rest of the package. But I'm confident that this will happen, as updates are released regulary, and unless it is a truly major upgrade are free.

Graham Anstey

kateabbott said

I'm confused by some of the lingo (ie what is UI?)

UI is short for User Interface.

Graham

When I was given the task by the family of sorting out our family tree I was new to both genealogy and computing, so I needed software that was easy to use. And here it is. The tutorials in the manual make it easy to take your first steps in the program using fictional data so you don't mess yours up!!
As I've progressed I've learnt more and more about FH and 90% of the time if I've wanted to do something, I can. The support on here and from Calico Pie is excellent; bugs are acknowledged and fixed and even work rounds suggested.
The best part has to be the diagrams. FH doesn't dictate to you how your diagram should look; no fancy scrolls if you don't want them, but the ability to lay things out how you want and choose what info you display. The rest of the family are always impressed by them.
Like Jon It would be nice to have different operators in queries and a more configurable report design, but I can live with those. Plus we know Simon and the team are listening and I'm sure will come up with more improvements.

Thank you, Graham!

I have used various programs over the last few years, but this is the best I have come across.

Best things: mailing list, this user group, the way it keeps to the GEDCOM standard which makes it easy to swap data with other people. I love the way it is so easy to incorporate photos and copies of certificates etc.

I haven't come across any major bugs and the updates have been free. The extra bits and pieces from other users such as GEDCOM census, fact sets and queries are wonderful too.

There are so many pluses and so few negatives, I don't care about what some of the 'professional programmer users' consider to be bugs, my data and the way it is presented is the most important thing for me.

Irene B

I have a fairly long history of using Genealogical programs, starting with an Apple II, with home cooked programs.

On PC platform I changed from Family Tree Maker when Family Historian was published attracted by its UK source. I was disappointed to find that the standard genealogy reports required a lot of work with custom reports to achieve anything. But subsequent Family Historian upgrades have added new features based on users requests. This is a compliment to Simon Orde's response to users needs.

The program is designed as standard Windows based program, and many features are intuitive to a Windows user. The excellent support for pictures in Family Historian made the chore of sorting them out painless. Other users have mentioned the way that FH handles pictures, and can use portions of them.

Previous comments have refered to the excellent support from the User Group and this web page thanks to the hard work of Jane Taubman. My use of Family Historian has survived my emigration to Israel. With web support and online upgrading I still find the program outshines any other I have used in its flexibilty and sophisticated support for diagrams.

Other programs have simple interfaces, but I haven't find one that can match FH abilities with queries, etc. It suites the beginner and experienced users.

kateabbott said:
I am currently researching all of the best genealogy software packages on offer for The Guardian

Please can you let this user group know when your article gets published.

When I switched to  (Family Historian) FH all the other programs were still using a User Interface (UI) that was designed with Windows 3.1.  They were behind the times and clumsy to use.  The UI for FH is largely up to date.

I had tried about 10 other programs and none of them gave everything I wanted.  A good family history program has to combine ease of date entry, database handling, report generation and an excellent graphic output (drawing capability).  FH covers all of these (I know some of the others on this list would like more features on the report and database query features, but these will no doubt come in time).

The best for me is definitely the drawing capabilities.  You can just draw people straight onto a diagram and enter their data right there without looking at the data structure.  This means you can go and visit your granny and put a diagram on the screen asking her about the family.  When she mentions her Uncle Bill that you have never heard of you just drag on the diagram and add him in.  When she later remembers the name of Uncle Bill's wife you drag on the diagram and add her in too.  Within a very few minutes you can create quite a large tree and then keep on talking as the tree brings back more memories such as dates which you then add straight to the relevant person on the tree.  I created this example in about one minute, starting with Elsie Smith you just keep dragging and adding as she talks.

The tutorial is excellent and instead of the usual boring the user to death it takes you through the features with a fictional family.  If you just want to try one feature you can open the file for that chapter and try that part out.  The tutorial is available for free in the version 3.0 demo from the Calico Pie website http://www.family-historian.co.uk/downloads/index.htm.  If you want to see why everyone here likes the program I recommend you download and try it out.  Better still put it on a laptop, go and visit your Granny (or Uncle Bill) and see where it takes you.

The support from both Simon Orde and the members of this user group have been well commented on above.  All I can add is that the user group for the program I used previously was almost all complaints about lack of support, lack of UK features, bugs etc.  This forum is usually full of praise for the program and its support and also with people helping each other out.

Reply to Jon Axtell
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As the designer of Family Historian, I am obviously delighted by the very positive remarks people have made about the program.  However there is one thing that I would take issue with, Jon, which is your description of Family Historian as ‘a bit buggy’.  I know that you immediately qualify that by saying that this is “in terms of UI issues” and “not in any serious way”, etc.  But nevertheless the ‘B’ word was used.

We take bugs extremely seriously – as I’m sure you would wish us to.  We are very proud of Family Historian’s deserved reputation for robustness and reliability.  But a consequence of this is that it is no small thing for us to hear Family Historian talked of in this way, and we can’t simply let it pass – especially when in our view, what is actually happening is that you are simply misusing the word ‘bug’.

What is a ‘bug’?  The Wikipedia definition seems to me to be absolutely correct:  “A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect result).”  The key phrase is ‘prevents it from behaving as intended’.  In other words – it’s only a bug if the program is not doing what we intended it to do.

You have been using the word ‘bug’ in a very different way.  For example, you have several times labelled as a ‘bug’ something that was a carefully-considered design decision that you happen to disagree with.  The program does exactly what we intended that it should do, but in your view it should be doing something else.  For example, in an email to me you described as a ‘bug’ the fact that you have to include a column for a record in a query, if you wish to be able to select the record in the results tab.  When we designed the query window, we carefully considered this very issue (and your preferred alternative solution) and rejected the option you prefer for reasons that seemed good to us then and seem good to us now. That is not a bug.

Again, you say that it is a ‘bug’ that you can’t change the name of a query (you can copy it and delete it – effectively achieving the same outcome – but you can’t rename it as such).  If we provided the ability to rename a query and it didn’t work, that would be a bug.    Simply not providing a feature you would like however – that is not a bug.

There is almost limitless scope for debate about design issues.  There are always arguments on different sides.  By all means quarrel with our design decisions if you wish to, or make suggestions for improvement;  but please do not describe your suggestions or opinions as anything other than that.  I’m not saying that there are no bugs in Family Historian – as we all know, all software has bugs.  But you have raised no issues at all with me that I would call a ‘bug’ and very few that I personally would even call a ‘glitch’.  They are almost all suggestions for improvements.  I am very sympathetic to many of your suggestions, though I don’t always agree with you.  But certainly there is nothing there that comes close, in my view, to justifying describing Family Historian as ‘a big buggy’.

All the best

Another excellent thing about Family Historian is the wish list, there is no guarantee that items on it will make it into the program, but by looking at the number of votes it is easy to see what changes most of us want.

So many people make a fuss about things in the various forums, agitating for things to be changed or added, then they don't even bother to vote for something that they have requested. The wish list votes give a better indication of how many users feel about specific things, and it is sometimes good to know that others feel the same about some matters.

Irene

Reply to Simon.

Looking back I can see that saying it's a bit buggy on the UI is a tad serious, but I was writing a short comment. If I wanted to be verbose I would have described the situation in a more details explaining why. However better terms would be 'some failings in the UI' as there are bits of the UI which do not work as expected. Other terms might be 'bloopers', 'issues' or 'gotchas' or just plain mistakes. I accept that you have made a number of design decisions to implement certain features, but conversely the lack of a design decision could be classified as a bug. Just because a design decision was made doesn't mean that it was the right one either. Take the hypothetical case of a programmer making the decision to implement a delete facility via Alt-D rather than the delete key or Ctrl-X or even a button called delete. It could even be described in the help, but if the user HAS to read the help to find it then, in my view, its a bug as the software doesn't work as expected. I expect FH to have gone through a lot of testing and your Beta test program confirms this, but is there any usability testing? This is seeing that the software can be used intuitively and that user's normal tasks can be performed easily without hinderence. I use a lot of different programs and not many drive me up the wall with their failings or lack of a feature, but unfortunately FH is one them.

One example of a blooper which is actually designed in but which is in actual fact a hinderence is that of selecting a source for a citation. The user can press a letter to go to the first source starting with that letter. You made the design decision to always accept Enter to open up a record's fields whether a source or an individual. In the case of selecting a source for a citation this is not what is expected nor wanted. When selecting a source you want to select using what seems the natural keys which would include the Enter key as it's definition can be seen as 'I've made my decision'. You then go on to compound the hinderence by not allowing the user to make their selection in any other way except via the mouse as you can't Tab to the OK button, nor press Alt-O. This is a bug even though the design decision was to use Enter to open up the record. There was no design decision to ensure that both keyboard and mouse could be used to navigate FH. In some case the mouse should prevail, diagrams for instance. But in other cases such as where handling textual information, the keyboard should be usable for everything. Forcing a user to switch between keyboard and mouse is a serious failing. This one blooper is probably the one that drives me up the wall the most.

You mention one of my bug reports about the lack of a rename for queries. I accept that you might have made a design decision not to provide this feature so it's not a bug in the legal sense. However as renaming anything is a common task, to have to go through a number of steps to perform it rather than have it provided is a serious failing. The user should not be made to go through a number of steps which are not obvious from what the actual result is.

The issue about the lack of the 'individual' column in a query which means that you can't select an individual is still, in my view, a bug. The query doesn't work as expected and is pretty much useles if there is no individual colunm.

Finally, these are my views about the program. I may be wrong and I reserve the right to be so. I'm just like any reviewer who might use FH and consider the lack of a facility a bug but I am happy to explain my decisions and rather than just slag off FH I'd prefer to see FH made an even better program from the very good program that it is currently. I've used many other genealogy programs and I would still stick with FH.

Good grief Jon, don't be more verbose or we will need a separate forum for you.

Sorry, I do get a bit carried away. Comes from touch typing which means that I type as I think!!!! [grin][grin][smile]

I type then think. My backspace delete key is worn out. [smile]