Beware the dangers of the new Ancestry Website

It was working yesterday my time, but stopped working today. It's doing the same thing for me.

 

My Hints are working just fine. It's now 12.50 Finnish time so 10.50 UK time.

 

I empathise Britjan and admit to a little more than muttering at times. Yes now and again 'exact' will bring about a desired result, but all too often it just brings about a NUL result. On reflection I prefer to opt for a 50-75% degree of exactitude (by using the slide bar) but this does not prevent the mutterings I'm afraid.

 

I have a couple of problems with the new site (apparently not widespread!) - firstly, the graphic display uses too much "real estate": shrink the box to a reasonable size and the text is too small to read and, secondly, how do you download an image without first accepting the hint* (and then delete all the extra bits it's added to the "time line") - selecting "no" or "don't know" does nothing. I have no problems with "addresses", having changed to including country (plus UK where relevant) some time ago; "registration district" references seem to pass without modification (the ones I have checked, that is).

Regarding searches, Ancestry and now FMP do not seem to know the dictionary definition of "exact", interpreting it as "contains some or all of the letters".

Phil

* edit: other than running a parallel search for the image data.

 

I have been using the "New" Ancestry for some time - originally it was only available to me if I logged on via ancestry.com but obviously now at ancestry.co.uk.
I quite like the new look - it appears crisper and more attractive and the images for each of my ancestors (where available) look much better.
I turned off the historical events option in the timeline after about the second day - none appeared to be relative to my ancestors - but I do like the way it shows the family related events. So far I have had no issues with addresses - where possible I select the option from the drop down suggestions and then add the detail (street etc.) and remove the country except when it is not England.
I do sometimes have issues with the hints link - sometimes nothing happens and when I click again it opens the main page for links - obviously sees this as a double click - sometimes a window flashes up which is too small to show the number of links indicated and sometimes it works fine - this can vary depending upon whether I click on the leaf or the number but it is not consistent. As this is a new "issue" for me I have just done some tests and found that when logged in through .com it works fine - logging in through .co.uk the problems appear.

 

I was prepared to give Ancestry the benefit of the doubt and concede that on occasion I had not been precise in adding England to a place name but yesterday they added the Americanization ( their spelling) of my great grandfather concluding that he had moved to the USA when he had been "absent" from a UK census . They cited a couple of US census for men with a similar name!! I looked again today and the supposed links and conclusion had gone. In its place they decided to post a reference to the building of Big Ben which I am sure somebody living in the Cambridgeshire countryside was very excited about. I suppose some people to need to be spoon fed with interesting trivia and I think this will do wonders for those public trees that are built on muddled facts and erroneous conclusions. Meanwhile the rest of us who rely on accurate information will tremble (like their famous leaves) every time we go on line wondering what new absurdity will be attached to our forebears.

 

Could someone please remind me how to return to Old Ancestry?

 

Your user name should be at the top of the page. Hover over it and the link to the old site should be in the drop down list.

I don't know if it's been changed since last time I looked at the new site but to get back to the old one you had to go via a comment page.

 

Thank you so much, Susan. It worked perfectly through my user name.

 

I'm not sure whether this should be under a Windows 10 heading or Ancestry, but as it concerns the latter I have decided to post here. I offer on a 'to whom it may concern' basis and report an oddity using Firefox within Windows 10 and receiving a most odd 'Invalid URL' error message.

To start at the beginning after receiving an initial rebuff from Ancestry that it was not yet compatible with the new Microsoft 'Edge' browser, I reverted to my normal default of IE for that site. Of late I have been getting what I can only describe as a 'double-take' in accessing various pages within my Tree: page opens, blinks -closes -and reopens and this happens with each new access. Whilst I like to get to the bottom of problems, for the time being I opted to try a different computer and accessed Ancestry in Firefox (remember always in Windows 10). The anomaly this time is the BAD REQUEST -Invalid URL message (and to the initiated a well known HTTP Error 400 comment). I contacted Ancestry on this one, but they gave a sort of throwaway suggestion I explore 5 different remedies (none of which worked) but as I have encountered the 400 error before I traced it to the fact that (in FIREFOX) the site was not supplying identity information and rejects the secure 'https' designation (which incidentally Ancestry say is not necessary for their site). Despite the error message the site performs OK and the subliminal double-take of IE is not present; just the Error message teach time.

So obviously I tried Chrome on a laptop to see how that behaved and apart from opening in 'Old Ancestry' -no bad thing you might say - and anyway can be changed (for the moment at any rate) to the new version which I quite like; so far (fingers crossed) it seems to be free of the niggles of both other browsers. Time will tell.

I intend to experiment (because I can) to see if it is computer specific or some Ancestry quirk and will put each browser through its paces on different machines, meanwhile if anyone has similar Ancestry 'blips' perhaps they will post of such.

 

No problem here with Firefox on W10.

 

No trouble here either with Firefox on W10

 

I must just report that my first experiment (see above) was to try EDGE once more (initially rejected by Ancestry with the message to try another Browser), and 'shiver my timbers' the Ancestry Welcome page opened and I signed in. It opened in New Ancestry and so far performs exactly as it should, and on first observations, much quicker.

 

I got an e mail today from Ancestry saying that from December the 14th everyone who logs on will see the new look Ancestry. I did ask, via Facebook, whether the old Ancestry would still be available, but it won't be. I had a look at my tree today and I'm not that happy. The first husband of one of my ancestors died at sea but on the new site that now comes out at him 'passing away' in Sea, Somerset. Now, I'm not aware of a Sea in Somerset and I certainly didn't mention that county in the old site. I managed to change it on the husband's page but it doesn't show on his wife's page. Not impressed, I'm afraid.

 

Maggy, there's a reasonably easy fix to the problem you've identified with how new look Ancestry displays, and you don't need to go through and change any of your data. I've used a similar 'died at sea' example from my own tree to demonstrate.

When you load up an individual's page, several buttons appear under the name. The first time you load a tree, it will default to 'Lifestory' and look a bit like this (and send poor Thomas back to Somerset when he in fact died at sea on the way to America):


If you click on the 'Facts' button, circled in the images above and below, it will show all the data and events as you entered them and give the correct death details!


The system remembers your preferences so if you stick to the 'Facts' page as you navigate around, it will start automatically with a person's Facts page next time you open up your tree. This new Facts page layout is a bit more powerful than the old Ancestry and makes it simpler to link multiple Ancestry sources to events, manage sources that have got uncoupled from marriage events, etc.

Lifestory doesn't appeal to me but I imagine it might be attractive to newer researchers as it puts information in a more narrative form and fills in (perceived) gaps or inconsistencies in how information is recorded.

 

Thank you Suzanne. I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only one who finds their ancestors dying in Sea in Somerset!