Introducing... Visual Family for the Microsoft Windows Operating System! by George Lawrence (The guy who brought you the PAF Viewer for Windows) WARNING: This is an EARLY release of this program. There are large components of the program still missing. Other portions are only partially functional. It is provided for your early evaluation and review only. Those folks looking for a functional Windows genealogy program should (for now anyway) look elsewhere. ALSO: The program will not start unless it can find the file CTL3D.DLL somewhere on your computer. I did not include this file because most folks have this file floating around somewhere on their computer and also because I wanted to lower the download time for the archive. If you intend to view Kodak PhotoCD files you must also have the file PCDLIB.DLL. I did not include this file for the same reasons mentioned above. I am hoping to collect feedback on the look and feel of my program at this early stage. If there are any changes to be made, the earlier the better. I know there are lots of missing components. If you can overlook this for now, I'd appreciate your feedback on the product. Below is a summary of the major components and features of Visual Family, with brief comments explaining the current status of implementation in this build. Three genealogy data file formats supported: -------------------------------------------- Read only PAF - Mostly functional. Read only ROOTS III - Mostly functional. Read/Write GEDCOM - Not functional at this time. Other data types supported: --------------------------- Kodak PhotoCD graphics - Mostly functional. Bitmap files (.BMP) - Not functional at this time. Audio files (.WAV) - Not functional at this time. Video files (.AVI) - Not functional at this time. Five different type of views into the genealogy data: ----------------------------------------------------- "Visual" view: Displays all pertinent information of an individual in an easy at-a-glance fashion. You can see the individual's spouses, parents and children. If the individual has more than one spouse simply select the other spouses in the drop down listbox and all changes are automatically updated. The visual view is mostly functional, but I feel it's kind of plain. I'd like to hear suggestions on how it could be jazzed up a bit. Pedigree view: This is the standard pedigree chart view of an individual and its ancestry. There is absolutely no limit on the number of generations which can be viewed at a time (but even on the best of displays more than 10 is hard to see). On the printed report however, you can easily read more than 10 generations. The pedigree view is mostly functional, but will only show the name of an individual, no other data. FGS view: This shows the typical family group sheet of a family. The FGS view is not functional in this build. Drop Chart view: As the name implies, this shows an individual and its descendents in a drop chart fashion. When you initially view the drop chart window, there is only one box. If you see a triangular arrow, that means the individual has descendents. To see the descendents and their own boxes appear, double click the arrows. There is no limit to the number of generations you can drop on the screen. But drop down too many and the screen will look cluttered. Again, the printout will look better. Also you can undrop a generation by clicking the up arrows. Just play with it, and you'll see how it works. The drop chart view is mostly functional, but there are a few problems with it. Firstly, the text is way too big to read easily and will not word wrap within the box, this means that most of the people's names will be cut off. Secondly, there is no way to change the spouses of any individual other than the folks at the very top of the drop chart. Notes view: This is the free-form text of the currently selected individual. It is not functional at all in this build. A note about views: - Double clicking on any individual will (or should anyway) make that individual the new primary individual. All the views of a database are connected to each other, so if you make a change in one view - like select a new primary individual in a visual view - that change should be reflected in all other views. Control Panel will let you change all the settings: --------------------------------------------------- There is a control panel which will let you configure all of your favorite settings for each type of on-screen view, or printed report of each view. As it is right now, the control panel will only change settings for the Visual view. The other areas of the control panel do nothing. But please play with the setting in the Control Panel for the visual view. The coolest thing, I think, is the slider bars for the size of the text and lines. All you need to do is grab the slider bar and you can instantly see the changes in size as you slide. If you want to change the color of the line or text, just click the right button and you can make is just how you like it. Select Tools | Options... from the menu, then click on the Visual View icon and play with the settings. Stuff to try: ------------- To get a quick idea of how things work, try this when you start up Visual Family. 1) On the menu select File | Open... 2) Find a PAF or ROOTS database and click OK. 3) Initially the visual view opens and presents you with the first individual. 4) On the menu select Tools | Options and click the Visual View icon 5) Play around with some settings and when you're done click OK. 6) The new settings should now take effect on the visual view window. 7) Now click on different individuals to find someone you like. 8) On the main toolbar click the pedigree button. 9) In the pedigree window you can increase or decrease the # of generations. 10) Now click the drop chart button and play around in the window. 11) Try clicking the tile windows button to arrange all the windows at once. 12) Now select a new individual in the visual window. 13) The change should trickle down to the other views as well. 14) Now minimize all those windows. 15) Start all over and open up a different database. 16) Play with as many different open databases as you'd like. Please send me your comments and suggestions: --------------------------------------------- Like I said at the beginning, the whole idea of this early version is to get feedback from potential users. Please send any and all ideas you might have about making Visual Family easier or more fun to use. I really look forward to hearing from you. The best way to send stuff to me is through eMail. But if you have to mail a physical object to me, you can use my street address. But I currently am in escrow and could be moving into my new house at any time. OK, so there you have it. Thanks for your help. -- George Lawrence CompuServe: 72350,1001 Internet: georgela@symantec.com Physical: 20326 Saticoy #8 Winnetka, CA 91306