New Features & Fixes

We're happy to announce that we've just completed our first major release since we launched just over a month ago. If you return to Geni now, you'll see the following new features and fixes:

Family Tree

• Easier removal of mistakenly-added family members, via the "x" icon
• More arrows for adding parents of relatives
• International keyboard layout support
• A new Edit Info dialog box, with frequently edited data on first tab
• A new field for display name on the Edit Info dialog
• A new Partners tab on the Edit Info dialog, with fields for marriage dates, locations
• A circa checkbox for birthdays and other dates on the Edit Info Dialog
• A county field for marriages and other events
• A new photo upload interface
• Easier entry of same-sex marriages/partnerships
• Better support for partners, not just spouses
• Better support for long names
• Increased size for the text used to display relatives' names, as well the title of the family tree
• Smarter display of "extra" people (placeholder nodes for parents and spouses)

Profile

• A new profile editing system, with more room for all controls
• Convenient in-place replies to comments on your profile
• All the same new fields as described above for the Edit Info dialog box in the Family Tree
• Support for multiple high schools/universities/etc.

Performance

• Optimized complex requests, for faster display of the family tree and family list

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, we're happy to read all of your comments and requests.

Comments

[xinyingho]

Hi there !
The improvements are quite welcome.
Just a disturbing thing : when we had a new school entry and then the overall isn't in chronological order, we can't make it so.

[Bret]

[Summary: Have a checkbox on the treeview to display "birth names" or "maiden names".]

I'm happy there's now a "display name" field for handling oddball name-changes or alias cases.

However, this doesn't address the matter at the heart of an acrimonious argument I had with my father: He believes that a person's birth name should be the only one entered, because the tree should only show their original name. (Never mind that the main reason he gives is that he doesn't believe his ex-wife's name should show her new husband's last name, in his mind a blemish on his family tree.)

I tried to explain to him that the tree view is a snapshot of the most recent state of every person in it, and that the maiden name data is there, albeit in a field not shown in the tree view, and that it's more important to enter the information in the profile accurately than to worry about how it shows up in the tree view. He can't distinguish between the data being modeled in the profile pages and the view being presented in the tree, and will only claim repeatedly that the tree is wrong, and that it should show only the maiden names. He also claims that when people do research for legal names the birth name is more important anyway.

While I disagree with his reasoning, I do see a feature which would eliminate the argument: Have a sticky checkbox for "show birth names" on the tree view. This would have his ex-wife (and everyone else) show up with their maiden name rather than their current or last-living name as they do now. I understand you'd want to eliminate the "no one can agree on a default so we made it an option" slippery slope, but I think it's warranted here, especially if other people are having arguments as frustrating and circular as ours.

[Arthaey Angosii]

When is family tree merging expected?

[Arthaey Angosii]

Is the "display name" a per-user preference, or will everyone viewing the tree see the same display name? For example, if I set my father's display name as "Dad", will *everyone* in my tree see him as that?

[Arthaey Angosii]

We need better image-cropping capabilities.

[Jan Liebe-Harkort]

1. There seems to be an error in the new version of Geni: The former fields for death data are shown in the fields for location data now.
2. The new boxes for dates and so on are too small for comfort.
3. As most people find their relatives in the same country, it would be very nice if one could enter a default country. It could be in the ME profile or the program could always 'remember' the country of the last input.
4. In my tree the YOUNGER siblings of my father are shown to the left of his box instead of to the right. In the tree of my grandfather they are shown correctly to the right. Could that be changed?
5. My oldest doughter is my exwifes child not mine. When I enter her where she belongs (as my exwifes and her former partners child) her box doesn't come up in MY tree. But I have accepted/adopted her as MY doughter. How can I get her box to be shown in MY tree. The same question pops up with my brothers (accepted) foster doughter.

Otherwise thanks for a great program.
Jan Liebe-Harkort

[Jim Carlson]

How does one create a placeholder node?

[kathleen fowler]

It would be great if there was a way to receive a hard copy of your family tree/info even if a fee was involved. My fear is that after much time and effort has been spent researching and entering the information, it is only available as long as the website is operable. If Geni has a problem and all that information could be lost.

[Tobias]

Very nice :)
One thing I still miss though is "Maiden name" for men (better not use that label for it, though :).

/Tobias, in a tree of 450 people mostly from Sweden and Finland.

[Matt]

The update looks great! Does anyone know if the option for marking a person as adopted has been added yet?

[Robert Rissler]

First of all, I really like all of the new changes to the site. I have a suggestion that should probably be incorporated into the next update. There is currently no way to show multiple links between two families. For instance, it isn't possible to show that two brothers from one family married two sisters from another family. This is something that surely happens quite often. Also, I have an instance in my family tree where my Grandfather's Brother (on my mother's side; no weird stuff going on here) married my Father's sister. There is currently no way to show this connection in the tree without duplicating entries. Just thought I would point this out. Again, love the site and keep up the good work!

[Stefan Hayden]

everything seems to work great!

[Brother]

Thanks for the update. I especially appreciate the display name option.

I'm having trouble navigating my main tree because it is only 4 levels in height but over 50 people wide, due to cousins and great aunts and uncles. Can you provide alternate views? Here are some that might help me:

1) Hide the pictures - that would allow more people to fit in the same width.

2) Vertical layout - show each generation vertically instead of horizontally, with successive generations from left to right instead of top to bottom. I think this could fit more people, especially if the email input box is hidden.

3) Miniature view - hide everything but the person's name for each box. Optionally, you can make it so that the full box appears when the mouse is over a person.

4) Have a slider to show more levels of people - for example, I would like to see second cousins on my tree without clicking on the little green tree icons. Of course, this could be hard to navigate without some of the options above implemented.

Some of these could be integrated with the current zoom functionality. Maybe others will chime in with similar suggestions. Can you tell us if any of these are already planned?

Thanks.

[Blaise MARION]

A few questions:
- Will Geni be avaiable in French, German, Italian, Spanish? Most Americans have European origines at one point or an other and I think it would help.
- When will it be possible to upload a GEDCOM file to input the data?
- Will you be using the SOSA numbers at one point?
- When will we be able to hide the name of the living people? It is a major privacy issue that would need to be taken into consideration.

[Elizabeth Swift]

My request is the same as Robert Rissler's (above). I have a cousin who married sisters. One wife died and he married her sister.

Love the updates. I was able to delete people who I needed to delete. I mistakenly added parents to the wrong person and was finally able to delete them today.

[ToHell]

Hiding the names of living people is NOT an urgent major privacy issue! After all, the interaction of living people is what makes geni.com unique. The tree is displayed on invite only, which gives enough privacy - and why is it anyway that only the authorities and the bad guys should have access to private data? I.e. the people you would want to hide from have their ways to get this information anyway - so why make it hard for the people with only good intentions?

[ToHell]

The name-fields are causing some confusion as they are based on the american default with one firstname, one middle and one last. In other corners of the world that is not the common way. eg. Sweden: Most Swedes have two or three "first names" (and are not necessary called by the first one in order) and one "last/surname". In addition, the "middle name" used by some Swedes are a second surname (most commonly the maiden name, kept as a middle name when married - or the surname of one unmarried parent when the other ones is used as real last name).

The common way to deal with it in genealogy software is to put all first and middlenames/extra surnames in the same box, and writing the "given name" in capital letters.

As you've introduces the "display name"-box, I would prefer to put all the first and middle names in the same "first name"-box and skip the "middle name"-box, then I would like to have two boxes: one for current last name, one for birth last name (NB that most genealogy software consider the birth/unmarried name as most important).
Finally, the "display name"-box should be used to enter the given name OR the nickname used by "everyone" for that person - but you'd need to be consistent here! The display-name should be used in ALL the listings - not just in the tree and in the profile as it is now.

Finally, I want all names to be displayed in the profile. Now there's only the display name and the rest is lost (if you don't go to edit-mode). The display name should be the main heading as it is, but under that should be all names in a smaller font, just like the nick-name.

[Rémi]

I'm also waiting for the french language to get my family involved in this great project. Could we help you translating or whatever ?

[Wayne Sanman]

Here's an idea. I've always heard people say "I'm 100% Irish", or "I'm half Irish, 1/4 Scottish and 1/4 English."
With that in mind, why not create a calculator to figure out the percentages of your heritage (or blood) depending on where your ancestors came from?

[Brock Harris]

I can't seem to delete my cousins emails, she has two emails and it keeps saying to try again later...

[Brian]

Great site but I think as trees grow there needs to but a way to lock down the viewing of certain profile fields to a certain radius of family members.

Once you connect to someone, and they connect to someone, and so on, you get to a point where a complete stranger (that you have little control over) is now viewing your personal profile.

For example, you may only want immediate family to IM you, not your wife's (non-blood) aunt's cousin son.

Most social networks have this capability, it would nice if it was added to Geni.

Also it would be cool to have something like LinkedIn's "Answers" where you could ask your network/family questions.

[Michael Nilson]

My grandfather has a brother who is married to my grandmothers sister. In other words, my grandpa and his brother married a pair of sisters, is there any way to represent this on geni? I couldn't find anything in the help or blog. TIA.

[Brian Acarregui]

I love the website. It would be great if you could add some print functions or a way to save our work into a hard copy on our computers to have the data ourselves just in case after all the work - maybe in Adobe Acrobat? Most of my other main concerns seem to have been addressed by others. Thanks.

[Mike]

I suggest a clearer sort order for the info-block "my immediate family" in the profile view. For me it is not clear, why my wife is shown first, then my parents and siblings and only then my son.

It would be better if my wife and son were shown first, then a separator and then my other family members.

[Bernard Tarver]

I would love it if there was a way to print chart information easily, perhaps if we could select individual branches or sections and print them.

We've got an upcoming family reunion planned for the late summer and while I hope I can bring a laptop and projector to show this information that may not be realistic, plus family members who are less Internet savvy or computer competent may still want hard copies.