Family Historian User Group

If you like Family Historian it's worth spending a few moments to write a review for the various sites which allow reviews.

People are far more likely to write a bad review than a good one and it's a pity to see FH being denigrated for things which could have been sorted by editing a text scheme and for the support being spotty.

So please if you are happy with FH take the time to tell the folks at GenSoftReviews or Amazon.

Family Historian Reviews on GenSoft
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com

Just a reminder to anyone who has not reviewed Family Historian at Gensoft Reviews, to please consider taking the time to leave a Review, some one has give it a 2 star review, because his data did not import fully into the trial without using a plugin to fix some of the data, which I feel is a little harsh, it would be a shame for FH to drop too far down the ratings based on that single review.

In the light of the recent announcement "The Master Genealogist to be Discontinued", other genealogy programs will now be in the spotlight, so it might be worth revisiting Jane's suggestion and links above and raising FH's profile relevant places. From my point of view, the more FH users there are, the more viable it is and more likely future development both from Calico Pie and new FHUG members.

Just done the first two. Very happy with FH

I've been participating more on social media lately, and I've talking about the new release of FH6 on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. I'm participating in the Genealogy Do-Over and have joined the Facebook group. It's a bit disheartening to see the new people automatically rushing to choose between RootsMagic, FamilyTree Maker, or Legacy Family Tree, but I'm trying to make my status as a Family Historian user known.

One thing I have noticed is that on Genealogy & Family History Stack Exchange, there is a list of functions displayed under each question, one of which is "share". Selecting that produces a box with a shortened permalink that is easy to use on services like Twitter which have restricted posting space. I see a bank of "share this" buttons on the Family Historian website for that purpose.

Would it be a lot of difficulty to add an area to the FHUG website -- just for the announcements -- that also had a quick way to share them?

I'm similar. I am doing this course with University of Tasmania and there has been plenty of discussions about software. Only a couple have mentioned FH and I have been enthusiastically waving the FH flag

As an experiment I have added some "share buttons" down the left on the forums. I will add them to the knowledge base if they meet with general approval.

I did not like them on the left as they often obscured stuff, but I notice they are now on the right and smaller in their own column, and much better.

When you add them to the KB beware of the Plugin Help & Advice pages.

There's a large stray version of the bottom icon shyly peeking onto the screen at the rhs near the bottom...

Helen, I have to pay $5 a month to get rid of that one, it should be a small blue bar most of the time.

Mike, the Help pages use a different template, so I have just added the buttons to the main template for now, as they are not needed on the help pages.

Three small glitches:

1. The blue triangles/chevrons below the buttons to hide them, are pointing the wrong way.
2. If there is only the original one message in a posting then the buttons appear horizontally at the bottom on the left and the top on the right. See Plugins in the Knowledge Base (6048) and Place List - better Find and column Sort (12093).
3. In Plugins their Help & Advice Window uses the luacom IE Shell. Some help pages link back into the main KB Wiki. When such links are followed (at least on Win XP) the following message appears:

   Internet Explorer Script Error
   An error has occured in the script on this page.
   Line: 0
   Char: 0
   Error: Script error
   Code: 0
   URL: http://load.sumome.com/
   Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?
   Yes No

   Does not matter whether Yes or No is chosen, the target page is displayed although some URL icons are displayed too large, and the righthand buttons are never displayed.
   For an example see the Export Gedcom File Plugin > Help & Advice > Introduction > GEDCOM Standard Release 5.5.
   I do not get that problem on Win 7, probably because I've changed the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Registry Key for FH to use IE v10 Shell, but I get other errors.
   If any of the new buttons are clicked the following message appears:

   Server Busy
   This action cannot be completed because the other program is busy. Choose 'Switch to' to activate the busy program and rectify the problem.

   But clicking any button has no effect and results in:

   Internet Explorer has stopped working

   plus other erroneous windows, EMET errors, and various:

   Internet Explorer Script Error
   An error has occurred in the script on this page.
   Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?

I have a samsung galaxy phone and have a nice row of buttons along the button. Tested the fb one and that works fine.

I have added some conditionals around the load of the button script which should stop it running for IE prior to 9. The buttons launch new windows and do quite complex things, so I suspect when launched from within a plug in window there might well be problems. I can either turn them off for the knowledge base completely or we just track down the links out from the plugin help and make sure they launch to a new window.

That certainly fixes the glitch with the Plugin Help in Win XP.
I will try Win 7 and Vista when next on those PC.

I have not tried yet, but I suspect a similar scenario applies to the FH Internet internal Webpage if FHUG were visited.

It poses a conflict of interest.
As you know, the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Registry Key for FH to use IE v10 Shell is desirable to support as many websites as possible, because the default IE Shell often does not. But that means the Social Networking buttons may be active and crash the IE v10 Shell.

If Calico Pie implement the suggestion to set the IE v10 Shell on installation, then there will be little alternative. In fact I viewed it as a benefit, because the KB Plugin Help & Advice pages would not need special treatment.

BTW: Have you looked at glitches 1 and 2?

The chevrons are correct on my view and I have logged the other one with AppSumo whose plugin it is.

Yes, they are correct in Chrome, but not in Firefox 34.0.5, cannot check IE as I am on XP that is IE v8 which displays nothing (of course).

And I have tried Refresh in Firefox.

Chevrons correct in IE v11, but of course I hardly ever use that since I much prefer Chrome.

Inhibiting the "share buttons" for IE v9 and lower helps a lot but is not the final answer.

That is fine on XP and Vista because their latest version of IE is v8 and v9 respectively.

The problem is with IE v10 being allowed to support the buttons in Win 7 and Win 8.

As discussed elsewhere, websites such as Family Search, require IE v10, so for the FH V6 Internet > Web Search Window to work, the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION needs to set IE Shell v10.

BUT then IE Shell crashes when the "share buttons" are used.

So perhaps the answer is to inhibit the "share buttons" for IE v10 and lower?