Genealogy Chat

I am now getting the 'refine your search' at the top of the page of search results, with an arrow that must be clicked to open the search form. Search results then appear below. I can neither see what I have searched for nor amend it without opening that form and thus hiding my search results from view.

I'm sick to the back teeth of websites being redesigned to accommodate mobile phone users - so that everything must be listed vertically, with reams of waste space for the rest of us, and making us scroll up and down constantly and preventing us from efficient use of our own systems. (At Ancestry's search form, why does the page number of a census record, and every other little useless bit of data from a census record, need its own entire line in the search form on my monitor??)

At familysearch, seeing the search info down the side of the search results was exactly what I wanted - to be able to see them both at once, both what I had searched for and what I had got.

Sites like this should have a 'view on a mobile device' option ... or for us serious internet users, a 'view the normal way' option.

rant over, because there is no point in the universe in saying this to the website operators in question

I still haven't looked at 'the new Ancestry' and I dread the day I open a page to find it has been foisted on me ...

weird ... in IE, I still get the old layout

in Firefox I get the mobile-looking version ... even after shutting Firefox down and restarting

anybody else?

I use it through IE and it's as it's always been

It's as usual on Firefox for me.

Re "At Ancestry's search form, why does the page number of a census record, and every other little useless bit of data from a census record, need its own entire line in the search form on my monitor??"

Here's one reason why - I can find my gg gran Sarah Thirlaway (a=1 in 1841) fairly easily on FS (as Thorlway), but their image link is to FMP images and I don't have a sub.
When I first looked it was arduous finding her on Ancestry, due to a mistranscription. And it might be on Ancestry that I've got a sub with access to images.
It's easier now since I corrected her dad's name, but only his as this was in the days before you got the option of amending the whole h/h, and had to corect it name by name, so it is feasible to find her dad and thence her, but the easiest way is to use the "useless" bits of info FS provides, viz:

Book Number 5
Page Number 6
Piece/Folio 846/6

This gets the 25 names on Sarah's page and it's easy to spot Sarah SHORTWAY a=1, and thence get the image (if I had a sub!!).

I used Firefox to access familysearch about 2 hours ago, and it was the same as usual for me.

mgnv you seem to rather facilely miss my point ... and I cannot imagine how it would be 'easier' to remember book number, page number, piece/folio number and type them all in the right slots than to simply search for the corrected member of the household and click through to her ...

my actual point is that the Ancestry search form is now designed so that all those niggly little datums have their own line, making the form inordinately long ... entering a 3-digit page number does not call for a blank space the entire width of the search form

when most people search for someone, the entire point is that they DON'T KNOW what page or district or volume or whatever else those things are ... but they may know the registration district, which you now have to scroll to the bottom of the search form even to find



well I don't know what's up with familysearch ... I went to it using a search results page from my history, even, and got the same new configuration

I suspect I am just getting the preview of what everybody else is going to be stuck with before long :-)

Firefox = as it has been for ages. Form on the left, results on the right. :-S

Who's facilely missing points? I chose an example which I knew was incomprehensibly mistranscribed to illustrate my point. It was difficult to find before I added a correction, and if I did have the ref # ho107/846/5/6/6 to search on, then it's easy to find. It might surprise you to learn I haven't yet supplied a correction to all of Ancestry's mistranscriptions, so it's liable to be useful for others.

It seems like you're really complaining that Ancestry's search form has removed a feature that smart phone users would find useful, namely the ability to hide/show advanced search items.

I have no idea why it would 'seem' that way to you mgnv ... my post is actually about familyseach and not Ancestry, and my complaint about Ancestry is the length of some of the the drop-down census search forms ...

as far as I know the hide/show advanced search form is still available at Ancestry ... at least starting from the basic census search page ... or so it seems to me since I occasionally get booted back to the basic search form by Ancestry and have to select 'advanced search' ...

(but then as I said, I have refused to try 'the new Ancestry' up to now so I can't speak about it)

I use only the advanced search form ... the other version of the form is useless for any serious searching

there was always an advanced search form at Ancestry

in the past, it was not two monitors long and did not require desktop users to scroll past the ... shall we say 'arcane' ... data points to get to useful ones like registration district

and my point that you are not addressing was and still is:

>> my actual point is that the Ancestry search form is now designed so that all those niggly little datums have their own line, making the form inordinately long ... entering a 3-digit page number does not call for a blank space the entire width of the search form


I absolutely fail to grasp how your knowledge of the page/piece/folio whatever numbers for your ancestor's census record whose name you have not corrected would benefit anyone else, unless you were in direct conversation with them about that particular individual ... again, 'arcane' ... and again, why not simply tell them the mistranscribed name, or the name of the person whose surname you did correct ...

I'm sorry but if you haven't noticed, these lengthy explanations about how to use these obscure bits of information to find things, offered to people looking for records (that have already been found for them in their threads), are virtually always not understood by or useful to them ... most people who come here really do just want to know who and where their ancestors are


now if you really meant that I was complaining about -familyseach- hiding the search form when results are shown, and forcing users to scroll down past the search form so it is invisible in order to see results ...yes indeed I am

if that function is useful to mobile phone users, then let familysearch produce a mobile version of its site as so many other websites I am familiar with do

not just decide that users of actual computers are surplus to requirements and our preferences and convenience need not be taken into account at all



I guess I will wait to see whether and when other users of familysearch encounter this same change!

JC - I can't comment on your main (FS) rant as I get my search items listed in the left margin where I can "refine my search" and so alter the hits on rest of the screen. Of course, I do have to scroll down those - 75 hits just won't fit.

What I see might be browser dependent. I use Chrome, but I have to use an obsolete version as my obsolete OS (Windows XP) won't support the newer versions.

this was my question ... because what I now see at the top of my FS search results is

Refine your search

with a rightward pointing arrow over on the far right that, when clicked, opens an enormous search form that takes up my entire monitor and I have to scroll down past in order to see the search results

no longer the 'refine your search' with all the search items I have selected and entered, down the left hand side

(did I say right hand side before? I have this right/left problem sometimes :-) )

it is obviously designed for mobile users

nothing I do gets rid of it / gets it back to the old format with the 'Refine your search' form down the left hand side of the search results


also, at the top right (as I can still see in IE, which I refuse to use for anything!) ... instead of having

Volunteer . Get Help
Sign in . Free Account

(or instead of 'Sign in', my user name, when I have signed in ... which no matter now many times I tell it 'keep me signed in for two weeks' I have to redo every time I open the FS page, this not being connected with this new format)

... anyway instead of those four things in the upper right, I have one of those three horizontal bar thingies that one is supposed to know to click on if one wants something I suppose
... and when I click on it I get a whole drop-down menu of things one might want to do at FS that I don't want to do, and then the menu will not go away


shades of things to come I am afraid ... don't say I didn't warn you :-D

How very strange.

I use Firefox.
From the home page, I click on Search -> Search historical records. I type in a name and year
The result is a page with the details of the ancestor down the LH side and the results on the right.
The 'Refine search' option is at the top left, just above where the name of the ancestor appears, with a down-pointing arrow.
I personally don't actually use this 'Refine Search' anyway because I find that clicking on the 'Collections' tab on the right (over the results) gives me quite enough opportunity to get rid of U.S. Census results when my ancestor never moved from Edinburgh.
However, clicking on the arrow brings up a column of refining options such as 'Filter your results by Collections, Birth place, Birth year...etc.' This column replaces the previous one where I had entered my ancestor's name and year of birth but in now way does it encroach on the (much broader) column of results.

Of course if Genes had a half-decent set up on these forums one could post a screen shot which would make things very clear, but.........

My top right hand side line of 'Volunteer, sign in, get help, free account' is unchanged too.

To sum up, sorry but the appearance of my FS hasn't changed in any way at all.

Why don't you contact FS support? They are extremely helpful.

I've been trying to figure out how to contact someone there with my question, but so far I've come up with a form that doesn't seem intended to elicit a reply ... but I'll have another look!


(I use the 'refine search' form on the left of the results to add or remove parents or spouses, for instance, or ask for deaths for the name instead of births, or just start another completely different search without having to go back to the original search form)

Joonie, I don't know if it helps at all but is there a difference when you change your zoom? I have mine set high because of my eye problems, so seem to have the problem you describe in your OP, but if I take it down to 90% the search is on the left again? This may not be what you mean though, I haven't used FS for quite a while and it does seem different. :-S

thanks Rambling Rose, I do fiddle with zoom sometimes too, but this is all beyond my control :-)

for info, I opened the stupid right-side menu and can't get rid of it now ... I would have to start over by clicking on 'search records' or something ... and because it has moved the whole thing over, when I click on the arrow to refine my search, now I can't even see the left side of the search form! (no, no bar at the bottom for moving left and right) ... anyway this is what the drop down menu from the three-bar thing in the upper right looks like

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so ... I shall try that 'contact us' thing there :-)

oh what fun, I have sorted it

I am working and playing on a 27 inch monitor

I have all my windows sized to slightly more than half the width of the monitor

if I resize that window by dragging the edge of it along until it is about 3/5 the width of the monitor

then it gives me back my whole normal FS window (and also disappears the stupid drop-down right-side menu)

so even though my window is a perfectly normal size when it is a little over half my monitor wide (i.e. it is about 13 inches wide) ... FS has decided that I am using some narrow-view device and switched me over to its mobile format

aaaaaaaaargh

now I know ... do not downsize the window to the width I actually want it ... keep it at the width FS has decided I must use


you can all probably try this

use the 'restore down' button in between the minmize (-) and close (x) buttons

narrow your window and keep narrowing it until hey presto, you are in the mobile device view


then you can ignore me :-)

too bad I can't 'mark as answered' this thread ... :-D