While answering yet another new user on Facebook who was lost starting his first Tree, I realized that I immediately enumerated 3 very basic stumbling blocks for the 1st time user. Are there others that bite EVERY new user?
(Ignoring installation woes. Almost every software package has installation idiosyncracies.)
There are 3 things that the new user might be missing. They must:
create a new (blank) Tree from the Family Tree → Manage Family Trees… menu (The concept that loading a new, blank is necessary before the Import… menu item appears in the Family Trees menu is utterly non-intuitive. And the concept that creating a New tree and confirming its name is necessary before theLoad family Treebutton undims adds another layer of non-intuitiveness,)
in the People view, Add a first new person to the empty Tree (Use the + button or select Add… to add a Person using the Edit or right-click contextual menus. The first Person in a tree is usually YOU and should be the Home Person.)
Add people to the tree, relationship by relationship (from the Relationship view, start adding parents, siblings spouses & children. Alternately, Parents are easily added in the Pedigree Chart view by double-clicking a grey box. Adding siblings, spouses & children are more effort in the Pedigree Chart view.)
There has been an evolution to Gramps to mitigate these some of these blocks.
Gramps now brings up the Manage Family Trees upon 1st launch. Unfortunately, new users generally cancel this thinking that they’ll just open (rather than import) a GEDCOM or just want to see the interface.
I never even noticed the Edit button that is to the right of the Suffix field. (I’d always gotten to that Name Editor dialog via double-clicking a row in the Names tab underneath.) It gets lost among the noise of the names form.
I think the Edit button placement would be more appropriate if it was beside the “Preferred Name” label at the top of the dialog. That would indicate the entire Preferred Name assignment was be being edited, rather than just the Suffix.
Yes, the “Family Tree Manager” - It’s databases isn’t it?
It’s actually not a “tree” until you have created a graphical hierarchical view out of it, so I have problem using a name for “it” other than what it is… but that is just me and my thoughts of what I work with…
I work with structured data/information stored in a database, and the software program I use as a interface to that storage has the feature to generate multiple views and reports, some of those is “Family tree” views in different shapes…
This!
In Graph view, in right click menu there is an add children when you right click on a family bubble, but in both Graphs view and standard gramps, there should be possible by right clicking the parent too. Maybe have two buttons, one for add to existing family and add to a new one. Or one button for every family.
When a person dont have parents yet, there is a button for adding them, but when a person already have parents, the button goes away. The button should be there for those people that have both adoptive and bilogical parents on a person or similar, makes it easier to add.
Also missing an add sibling button, yes.
I think adding these ones should be high priority personally, its probably not that hard to code either as it is mostly just “links”?
I dont find that as important as those above, but yes!
I did not know that button exists, but yes.
What I always is done is pressing the names tab and then edit button there.
In fact, I am still a new user - because the seemingly arcane data entry and structure left me cold. Not that I don’t have a desire to use it, just that the workflow didn’t seem to make much logical sense, though I was and am impressed with the scope and capability of it.
It’s all to easy to gripe at large software applications and how they ‘don’t do X, and don’t do Y, and aren’t joined up’ so I didn’t and this is not a gripe, just trying to pass along an observation.
I have worked on huge systems, vital systems, and they were usually like Gramps. Sarted out doing one thing, added handy bits, stuff growing here and there, and changes steadily making the next change harder as the need to stay backward compatible makes every change harder to make and harder to test and increases the risk of breaking something in a far way part of the application.
My issues as a new user were/are mostly about the absence of simplicity at the training wheels stage.
/startup training
“welcome new user, this is a new installation of Gramps, and it has been initialised with a new database we named ‘Welcome’ - you can try out things, or you can rename it and use it as you wish”
play series of screenshots
"To get started, enter someone’s name in screen 1. Use your own for now.
Now enter that person’s spouse/partner in screen 2
Enter a child of the 2 people using screen 3
Enter a parent of one of the 2 people using screen 4 "
"Congratulations - you have a basic family entry. (options to view in different ways here)
You can enter another family or person the same way. If you then find you need to link 2 people later, do it using screen 5
To add detailed information such as certificates, images, notes - refer to …
/end startup training
that’s all just a simplistic view, and its just my notion. I think If I’d been able to follow along with something I’d have gritted my teeth and got down to it. As it is, I’ve put it aside for now.
It is a new year and the 1st support issue on the Facebook “Gramps for Genealogists” group is about how to to import a GEDCOM. Again.
Why is this still an issue? Because the Import… menu item does not exist until a new Tree has been ❶ Created, ❷ Named, and ❸ Loaded in the Manage Family Trees… dialog.
If the Import… menu item appeared but was DIMMED, it would be less of an issue.
If the Import… menu item appeared and opened the Import Family Tree dialog then created & loaded a new Tree named for the eponymous Import file, it would be no issue at all.
Gramps already does the 2nd process if you start Gramps from the OS by Opening the .ged file with the Gramps application. (Gramps has to be closed.)
Why can’t the GUI do the same and obliterate this nagging new user problem?
Another way to eliminate the “New user with no Tree loaded” stumbling block would be to: add a Jumpstarting contextual menu item in that case.
Have the Add menu active with just the Family option active. If no Tree is loaded when this is selected, Gramps adds a new Tree (with the default Tree name, iterated name if necessary), loads that Tree before displaying the New Family dialog:
From this point, starting a new Tree is pretty straightforward.
(Although it would be eliminate another stumbling block if the Add new Object routines looked to see if it was creating the 1st object in the category. If so, it should be made the ‘active’ object in that category. And, if the Person object category, also make that the Home Person.)
