Linker proof-of-concept
Alrighty, here’s a proof-of-concept for the linker I mentioned in my last post. After I’d used Flickr for a while, the drag-and-drop organizing became addicting, and I realized that it’d be perfect (I think) for organizing the people in your database. Here’s the Flickr layout:
You find your photos in the strip at the bottom, then drag them into the set you want them in. It’s that easy. So, taking the same idea and applying it to genealogy, I came up with this:
It’s quite rough, I’ll admit, but the gist of it should come across. The software would be smart enough to re-order the children in birth order, I’d imagine. The “Family” text in the upper left would create a new family. (It should be labeled “New Family” instead, on second thought.) “Other” would create other kinds of relationships — friends, employers, neighbors, etc.
So, instead of starting with the pedigree and filling in the blanks, you would enter people instead — without caring (at first) who goes in what families. After you’ve entered the people you’re interested in, then you’d go to the linker, find the people you just added, and drag-and-drop them into families.
Since it’s still just an idea, I don’t know if this is better/easier/faster than the traditional methods. Thoughts?
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I agree the drag-and-drop linking is a good idea. I disagree about the workflow: enter individuals then link them together. That seems too modal, and constrains the user.
Not sure of the mechanics, but what I’d like is the ability to add new individuals and link them within the same view — so when I suddenly think of someone else I want to link it, I don’t have to leave the flow of what I was doing.
Maybe that just needs to be a ‘new person’ button added to the view you have (along the bottom). The trick is to make the ‘new person’ interface come up without taking the user out of the flow of what they were doing — a popup window or overlay div in the current window?
Good point. I like the idea of a ‘new person’ button, at least from the sound of it. (I realize now that I need to think more thoroughly about the workflow. :)) Anyway, a lightbox-style dialog would probably be the least intrusive. Having a real popup would be of a pain, and it would get blocked often. Here’s a (really) quick mockup of the lightbox idea:
Disclaimer: I don’t actually think that an “Add person” dialog should look like this. In fact, I still don’t know what one should look like. More to come later.
When I think ‘popup’, I’m definitely thinking lightbox-style (div in the current document) vs a real popup window.
More thoughts on workflow: I want to have fewer specific modes. I don’t want to distinguish between a view mode and an edit mode of the same data. So there’s a single family view, and if I’m authorized to make changes, then edit controls are visible. Part of the edit controls is a palette of individuals that I can drag from and add to the current view.
As for popup v. overlay div (by overlay div I’m assuming you mean something like Fluxiom’s panel that slides out from the bottom and then slides back in when you’re done), either would work, I think. It might be kind of weird having a panel slide out on top of the people-strip at the bottom, but then again it might not. Hmm.
Good call on the amodality, or whatever one would call it. :) How about this: if you’re authorized to make changes, then when you hover over the fields, they get outlined, and when you click on them they turn into edit boxes (like in Google Calendar). Simple, unobtrusive, and ever-present.
This is a great idea. Non-tech people will like it. besides wishing to document my own family, right now I am working on a similar project, pedigrees for horses, which includes a family tree. I have been just skimming beyondproject.org. Is this project in rails? If so, I would love to contribute some help and or code.
Lately the project has been somewhat dead in the water, with no real code yet. But it’s more of a hibernation. Hopefully I’ll be able to start pulling things together soon…