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Messages - GrahamH

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1
Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation / Re: Gedcom files and databases
« on: Friday 05 September 25 06:52 BST (UK)  »
Whether or not the software will add people from a Gedcom file to your existing database depends on how it works (i.e. whether "import" is simply an operation to open a different file or whether it has a merge component).
You need to have a look at the user guide for the software you are using before doing anything.

As an aside, I hope you have verified all the data in the downloaded files (which your post implies were created by someone else). You don't want to put a lot of work into adding information to your database and then finding that the other person made an error.

2
The Common Room / Re: Ancestry and win10.
« on: Saturday 23 August 25 06:24 BST (UK)  »
I wrote my first program, at the age of 15. Nothing unusual about that one might say - but it was in 1966.

I subsequently spent a career of over 30 years in software development, all stages from analysis, through design, build, implementation and maintenance.
The rot started in the 1980s when code generators started to become popular and organisations could employ coders rather than programmers who understood the "nuts & bolts". Managements also started restricting resources for analysis, design & testing. They started to excuse finding of errors by early users by claiming it was "beta testing", even though the content of the "real world" "test" regimes was undefined so the results were unpredictable.

Over 15 years ago, when we had our own family history company, a Microsoft browser update caused problems with running our scanned book CDs. It turned out that "testing" had been totally inadequate and MS "experts" even had problems understanding that there could be anything wrong when I showed them where the error lay.

Having said that, as pointed out before, if it is only Ancestry which is exhibiting problems then it is at the Ancestry end and not the browser/OS on the client machine.
Often, slowness in serving up web pages is a result of inefficient code which is full of bloatware being used to build the programs running on the server.

3
The Common Room / Re: Ancestry and win10.
« on: Friday 22 August 25 06:46 BST (UK)  »
I have used Ancestry (and many other websites) on both Win10 and Win11 without any problems.

As has already been mentioned, if other web sites aren't exhibiting the same slow response it rules out any software running on your machine.

4
Technical Help / Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
« on: Saturday 26 July 25 12:51 BST (UK)  »
Quote from: Zaphod99 on Saturday 26 July 25 09:09 BST (UK)
It's slightly off topic but I get really frustrated by how different websites can look if you change from one browser to the next. Sometimes I'm instructed to press a certain link, or rather click on it, and it's not there but if I look at the same page in a different browser I can continue.

Zaph
I changed from Firefox to Chrome for that reason over a year ago.

Back to topic, FindMyPast seem to have stopped the JSON error from occurring but the site is still slow and serving up far too many "we are unable..............please reload" type messages.

5
Technical Help / Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
« on: Saturday 26 July 25 08:51 BST (UK)  »
I have just tried again and I am able to display pages from results now.

However, the various searches I have run do not bring up complete results. Some hits which I know should occur, because I have repeated searches from the last few days, do not appear.

I just ran a search which said there were 3 hits in a particular date range but opening the results page presented 9 pages to choose from.

It appears that somebody has implemented an update without properly testing it before making it live.

6
Technical Help / Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
« on: Saturday 26 July 25 07:23 BST (UK)  »
I spoke too soon I'm afraid.

When I read the post I thought the whole search was going wrong so when I posted I had only brought up the search results based on a set of parameters.

I now find that it is OK until I want to actually display a page from the results.
At that stage the message "An error occurred SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<', " <! DOCTYPE " ... is not valid JSON" is displayed.

I have sent in a report to FindMyPast.

7
Technical Help / Re: FindMyPast newspaper error
« on: Saturday 26 July 25 06:44 BST (UK)  »
I've just tried a search now (06:43 BST 26 July) and it is OK. A bit slow but it has been on and off over the last few days.

Chrome browser on Windows 11.

8
Family History Beginners Board / Re: Searching for an old address in Eston, Middlesbrough - Peacock Yard
« on: Wednesday 16 April 25 07:39 BST (UK)  »
In the 1891 census extract by the Normanby Local History Group (https://www.normanbyhistorygroup.co.uk/census-1891-extract.php?listby=Street) there is a James Peacock (age 63) Joiner, born Reeth, Yorkshire at 5 West Street, which is not far from Cross Beck House on the 1894 map referenced above (https://maps.nls.uk/view/125623768#zoom=5.0&lat=6201&lon=13694&layers=BT).
As a guess Peacock Yard may have been the location of his business.

9
Technical Help / Re: Thunderbird email
« on: Monday 14 April 25 07:25 BST (UK)  »
The main point about this discussion is to understand that webmail (e.g. BT) and email clients (whether Thunderbird, gmail or whatever) are only for accessing and sending emails.
They have in and out/sent boxes which will store messages for a while but that's no different, logically, from the mat or cage behind the door with a letter box in it. They are not designed for long term storage.

Any messages which one wishes to keep for future reference should be stored in a structured system like any other files.

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