General Chat

I have been having problems with data entry where GR is not saving data which I have input, eg birth or death locations, or sometimes things added to the 'Notes' box. I have given GR all the details of my PC, which version of Windows and that I use Internet Explorer 9 which in my mind is still a pretty current version. The response from GR :

"I'm sorry that you've had problems saving data to your tree on our website. Our records show that you're not using an up-to-date version of your chosen web browser so it looks like that may be the problem."

They then go on to suggest I should be using Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari, none of which I want to use. I have suggested to GR that they ensure that their software and system remains compatible with fairly recent versions of Internet Explorer rather than GR trying to compel thousands of subscribers to change the Internet platform.

What do others think ?

After all the problems with GR they always come up with the same old (Ancient) excuse. might as well bang your head against a brick wall, at least you would get a better response (A Headache) :-(

GR has only just started working with 8.1

Martin - I have had problems saving details of births, deaths, notes and marriages, especially marriages, since GR tinkered about with the tree at the end of December 2012, last occurrence was yesterday.

I find that if I am only entering one or two items is is ok, but where you are doing quite a few it gives up the ghost and does not save the information.

Gave up reporting problems to Support long time ago as I got fed up being fobbed of with their excuses and being treated like an idiot, it was a complete waste of time.

What I do is close down the tree and reopen it and do a few more entries till it plays up again then close down the tree and so on and so on, nuisance I know :-(

Are GR unaware that Apple no longer provides Windows support for the latest version of Safari?

An up-to-date release of Safari is no longer available for the Windows operating system.

Internet Explorer 9 is no longer considered a current version and has been superseded.

If anyone would like to know how to update IE or migrate to a different browser let me know and I'll repost the instructions I put up last year.

IE9 was released 2 years ago which is back in the stone age by internet standards. It has never been available for XP though a version exists for Vista. IE10 has been available for Win7 for a year, Win8 longer.

It is NEVER a good idea to go on using old web browsers (*) because of the security issues in doing so. Do not assume that old versions of IE, Firefox and so on get endless security updates, they don't. Thus users of XP and VISTA have little choice but to drop IE and use something else. Most web sites without the endless resources of BBC and its ilk have in any case dropped support for old versions of IE ( 8 and older ).

The web is moving onto something called html5 which has many changes to the old methods. Microsoft had hoped to hijack html5 with its Silverlight technology but this has not happened. However Microsoft (IE 8 9 ) remains by far the worst browsers in terms of compliance with html5.

Smaller outfits such as GenesRU basically code against html5 using Chrome ( which auto updates no option otherwise ) and do not make extensive adjustments for the vagaries of IE. They take the business point of view that users have the option of using Internet Explorer 10 ( which is not too bad ) or Chrome, FFox, Opera etc. It is ez pz to download an alternative browser, install it and allow it to import all yr bookmarks history etc. Free too.

Like it or not things change. No doubt in March this year the penny will finally drop for all the millions and millions of XP users that MS support is over and new installs problematic.

(*) Some large corporates and UKGov departments have extensive systems built on IE6 of all things. This is one of the reasons for the chaos and overspend at the DWP. The UK firewall ( using hardware from a Chinese company (!) ) is supposed to prevent IE6 insecurities being opened up to the wild wild web.

One alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on Microsoft products is of course to use Linux. If you run a Linux64 box with at least 4GB memory it can also run a guest XP operating system like a champ for most of all yr old software. :-)

Hello Rollo the Red for the most concise response so far.

It's a shame GR just do not 'come clean' and say all this sort of stuff. I am actually using IE9 with Windows Vista. So maybe I just will have to change. But it still frustrates me that GR does not functionally work well with an Internet platform released less than three years ago.

Strikes me that people like Ancestry and Family Tree Maker (same company, I know) don't seem to have such problems. I run several trees in GR and my own 'master tree' is in there with around 13000 names and many many hundreds of attached images.

I subscribe to Ancestry as well and 'dump' mirror copies of my trees into Ancestry so I can utilise their cute little waggling leaves to glean more information (or mis-information in many cases).

I guess if GR cannot make their system work in the long run then I am guessing a lot of the alleged 13 million members will be moving to something that does actually work. Perhaps I need to buy a ticked for 'Who do you think you are live' in London next month and talk to these guys face to face ?

In terms of resources, Ancestry are 100 if not 1,000 times bigger than GR.

I find that Firefox suits me and use it for 99% of the time. Both my Desktops are creaking, i.e (more than 5 years old) the better one is W7, the other XP. Both work perfectly fine with GR and indeed other sites with the latest version of FF..

I use Firefox

my desktop is Windows XP


and I never bothered updating IE from IE6 ................. so you can tell how old it is :-)


I've used Firefox only for the last couple of years, constantly automatically updated .............. and I have very few problems with GR