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Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland => Topic started by: shanew147 on Sunday 31 October 10 10:28 GMT (UK)

Title: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: shanew147 on Sunday 31 October 10 10:28 GMT (UK)
just to remind people that the familysearch pilot site that we use for Irish Civil BMD and extracted record searches is soon to be discontinued and replaced with the allegedly improved Beta site at : https://beta.familysearch.org/

There is an option to report feedback and problem with a tab to the right of the screen.

The only improvement that I see in this system is that you can now use either a registration district or county in the location field .. although this does not seem to work consistently (particularly for deaths).

The main problem that I see is that there are now no filters to limit the results to a particular event type, county or series of decades etc

Quite a few of the comments reported have been relating to the missing filters.



Shane
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: Taidquest on Tuesday 02 November 10 18:33 GMT (UK)
I agree the missing filters are a problem and I for one will miss that feature.
Also on the few occasions when I have used the beta site it shows a certain
 number of results which don't all seem available to view for some reason.
Another great feature of the present pilot site is being able to hover over the results
to see more detail without having to click into the entire record.I think the beta site
also includes the I.G.I which does'nt go beyond about 1881?Not good for some of mine
born after that date who have been leading us a merry dance by changing first names
 and surname spellings between children and also using relatives addresses sometimes
 instead of their own.I have already given feedback on this but it looks like
the decision is made.It's a great resource though and I will definitely continue to use it.
                                                                                                             Anne
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: eadaoin on Tuesday 02 November 10 22:09 GMT (UK)
I found the site horrendously awkward to use - with no filters, it gave far too many "hits".

I wasn't able to use the registration district at all - maybe it was having a bad moment

I'm off to give it a second chance on stuff that I know is there

eadaoin
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: obbie on Thursday 11 November 10 17:34 GMT (UK)
im still useing ireland civil registration indexes 1845-1958

http://www.rootschat.com/links/0adg/

workin fine just hope they dont mess it up with there Beta
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: aghadowey on Thursday 11 November 10 17:46 GMT (UK)
just to remind people that the familysearch pilot site that we use for Irish Civil BMD and extracted record searches is soon to be discontinued and replaced with the allegedly improved Beta site at : https://beta.familysearch.org/
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: DudleyWinchurch on Thursday 11 November 10 18:03 GMT (UK)
I don't know if the beta site improved this week or I just got better at it.

I'm getting much better results on the BMD indexes by popping in "Dublin North" in the location field instead of just "Dublin". 

It still gives me far too many results, but now puts the ones for the chosen registration district first (in this case followed by those from Dublin South, which is an added bonus).

It does seem to be much easier to find them and compare if there are several for the same date with this system.

However I would still like to be able to filter for first name based on start letters, as with the first attempt system.  Some names have far too many spelling variations.
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: shanew147 on Thursday 11 November 10 18:14 GMT (UK)
Some news about a recent update - see : link (http://getsatisfaction.com/familysearch/topics/december_7th_update)

(from getsatisfaction.com, which is the company proving user feedback support for familysearch)


Shane
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: skibbgirl on Tuesday 16 November 10 23:58 GMT (UK)
I find it very annoying that I cannot filter results better, and my browser hangs waiting for a page of results to display.  I was always very annoyed with pilot that I could not specify to search ONLY the births or ONLY the deaths in civil registration, I ended up with both.  At least they now demarcate what were the better matches and which ones didn't quite make the grade.

On pilot, the results were better formatted.  A field label marked with a colon and then the value.  Now it's just the field label, a tab, and then the value.  In a letter to GRO that looks very sloppy.  I do a heck of a lot more formatting of results now.
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: MUMMYG on Wednesday 17 November 10 01:56 GMT (UK)
I absolutely hate it, :(   I hope they keep the old one around. Why do they have to change it, why not just weed out the submitted records, new doesn't always mean better  :'(
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: DudleyWinchurch on Wednesday 17 November 10 07:38 GMT (UK)
It's annoying not to be able to choose just births or just deaths etc. but the old test site doesn't really allow that either as it classifies anything with a birth date as a birth (so for civil regs. that includes deaths).

You can now prioritise what you want by only putting a location and preferably an approximate date (assuming that you have one) in the location field for the event that you are looking for.  That usually (but not always) seems to work - I guess they are still playing around with the settings.  An extra box to tick (or give a numerical value to) just saying "prioritise" next to the event header would be far more useful.

MUMMYG when you get your results, you can then go down and select just the database that you want, to get rid of all the rest, though I'm now beginning to find it useful that it groups together entries for same name and date from both IGI (possibly including parents names) and the Irish GRO index databases so you can quickly match up which is likely to be the correct index to any further details supplied from extracted or submitted entries.
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: Annette7 on Wednesday 17 November 10 13:47 GMT (UK)
Glad it's not just me - love the pilot site and 'assumed' the beta site would be like that but better.   

Don't like the search screen and like others don't like how the results come up.

Pilot site results simple and to the point.    Beta site not!

Annette
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: Taidquest on Wednesday 17 November 10 14:20 GMT (UK)
I have to agree with the comments here and add another one,
the few times I've tried out the beta search I keep getting a banner mostly
 at the top of the results page which says"the following results don't match
 strongly with what you searched for but may still be useful"
I've 'lost the rag' with it and now have stopped using it altogether.
                                                                         Anne
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: MUMMYG on Wednesday 17 November 10 16:10 GMT (UK)
Me too!!! >:(
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: shanew147 on Saturday 08 January 11 15:19 GMT (UK)
The beta website link mentioned above, now automatically forwards to the main familysearch website https://www.familysearch.org/ which has been updated with the revised front-end and search functionality.

To go directly to the Irish BMD Index try this link (http://www.rootschat.com/links/0b3u/)

Note the 'Place' field on the search function works best if you use the name of a Registration District rather than the county.



Shane
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: tbirduk on Thursday 13 January 11 11:34 GMT (UK)
Has anyone worked out how to identify a (possible) marriage partner in the Civil Registrations?
Without the the ability to filter on
volume number:
page number:
digital folder number
:

or the Quarter, it can be a very long list for some Places!

Helpful hint - if you want to filter on  Dublin South or Dublin North do NOT enter a space in the Place Filter ..... :-X
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: MUMMYG on Thursday 13 January 11 14:45 GMT (UK)
The old version Familysearch can still be used.

Heres an explanation about how the new version is organised

http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/search?q=where+igi
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: tbirduk on Thursday 13 January 11 15:18 GMT (UK)
The old version Familysearch can still be used.

Are you assuming that all the records that are in NFS were in the old system?

"Find more records by searching on the updated FamilySearch site."

If one could have found the 1898 Dublin marriage for the London born Charles Edward Smee in the old system there would have been a lot less confused people trying to work out why he was a widower when he married in London in 1905  :) 

Pete
Title: Re: Familysearch Beta Web-Site
Post by: ConJPower on Friday 02 September 11 16:53 BST (UK)
I agree the new Family Search site isn't up to much.

I'm sure people know this by now but regarding filtering, the filter results themselves are links too.

So if you go to drill down on a record, and it shows something like {Europe} 800, that line is a link too which will filter further into countries etc.

Took ages to find out and smacks royally of a web develper not too interested in user experience ! ???