Family Tree
Renee Zamora has written an article, FamilySearch’s New Feature Family Tree, about the Church’s replacement for TempleReady. (It does much more than that, of course.) It’s good to know about this because some features in Beyond will be pointless in the context of the new system (LDS-specific features, that is).
I’ve been thinking about online systems (like Family Tree, phpGedView, etc.) and wondering if there’s any point to writing desktop-based apps for genealogy anymore. The benefits of online are obvious for sharing and being able to access your information from any computer. As far as disadvantages go, the only real clincher I can think of is that you won’t always have Internet access when researching (especially out in the field).
I’m still going ahead with Beyond, regardless. There’ll be some research-oriented features which I doubt I’ll see on any online genealogy apps anytime soon, and I personally prefer doing my genealogy on a desktop app (if you’re online and the connection goes out, you can’t work anymore, and you may have lost some data).
But I’m not going to let my stubbornness get in the way of progress. :) I’ll be paying attention to where things are going in the genealogy/technology world and see how Beyond can best fit the needs that exist now and the needs that will exist in this new world.
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Seeing your mock layout at http://beyond.blankslate.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/02/Beyond-PedigreeMock1.png
I think it would be great if you could put some of your talent to work by creating a nicer theme for PhpGedView. If some html changes are needed, I am sure that the open src PhpGedView would be able to accommodate.
That’s certainly a possibility — I’ll look into it and let you know (via this blog). I’m in this to make the genealogical computing world a better place, and if phpGedView helps with that, I’m all for it. I’ll admit that I’ve only given phpGedView a cursory glance because I haven’t been too interested in web-based genealogy apps, but on second thought it doesn’t deserve to be dismissed without a more thorough examination. More on that later. No matter what, though, I’ll still continue on with Beyond, because I think there really is a need for a good, beautiful, user-friendly genealogy desktop app on the Mac.
Any updates?
Not yet, unfortunately, but I’ll see what I can do. Besides, working with the phpGedView interface will be a good exercise for designing Beyond’s interface. :)