Who Do You Think You Are? FTM 3
Now published under licence by Avanquest and released in October in serendipitous synchronicity with Series 3 of the eponymous DVD set comes Version 3 of the Who Do You Think You Are? (WDYTYA) software.
 As with previous releases, this is a prior version of Family Tree Maker (FTM). In this case it's version 2008 but don't panic, it's not the original issue with severely-challenged functionality but the later 'new', heavily patched version. The omitted features were introduced in a series of service packs you could download and apply to the original FTM 2008. If you did that and want to stay with FTM, you should be looking at the new 2009. If you didn't, WDYTYA? 3 will upgrade your FTM 2008 for you by adding the patches now.
Among the restored items are the Genealogy (Register) Report; Ahnentafel Report; Hourglass Chart; and Vertical Ancestor (Pedigree) Chart. Also back are the unique paginated, cross-referenced (but no longer indexed) Book Drop-line Descendant charts, useful for supplementing reports. You can now save your settings for charts and reports and your chart templates. There are changes to all reports to improve facts and notes; and updates to the exporting of reports to RTF and HTML.
The resolved issues are said to include: fixes to unhandles exceptions; fixes to memory management issues (although it still freezes - try to run it without too much other software loaded at the same time); import fixes; updating display of program data throughout the program after data is changed; and stopping crashes due to Firefox being the default browser.
Other improvements claimed are performance enhancements in import, export and upload; enhancements to web merge and web clipping; wider range of supported image types; a find-and-replace tool; the ability to rename media files within the program; and automatic simple backup at shutdown.
What you don't get back is FTM's sel-published book. Or rather, you can't print it yourself anymore. Instead you have to upload each one to Ancestry Press instead. Other charts and reports notable by their omission are the fan trees, and the all-in-one tree. You still get space on Ancestry's server to upload your charts and reports but, as with books, Ancestry's terms and conditions still give it the right to 'distribute' your file however it wishes without compensating you in any way for this.
"If you've used it before you'll be mourning what it was and could have been." |
More cheerfully, the default People view now puts lots of useful information in seperate panes - person index, pedigree chart, family group, and a customisable pane that can show a photograph, facts (BMD), media, notes, and tasks, all relating to the selected person. From the Person screen you can display a useful timeline of that person's life, including events such a birth, residence, marriage, profession, and so on. You can also incorporate (preponderantly US) historical events.
The new Places view lists all the places in your database, gives you the opportunity of 'correcting' them according to its gazetteer (which defaults to similarly-names US places) and brings up a map of the place and its environs. You can choose a conventional road map, an aerial view, or a useful hybrid of both, all zooming in to show street names. The Media view displays your attached media files (for example audio, video, photo, text). You can add captions, dates and descriptions, and allocate categories. The Sources view brings all your sources together and lets you add notes, media and links.
If you've used FTM before you'll be mourning what the program was and could have been. If you've never used it you'll find that what it does now, is done in a friendly fashion. The new features, with information more conveniently grouped, will make research and analysis easier.
WDYTYA 3 comes in two editions. The Deluxe Edition comes with a free 3-month 'Essentials' membership of Ancestry.co.uk; genealogist Nick Barrett's video presentation, Top Ten Genealogy Hints & Tips; a printed Getting Started Guide; video clips and PDF family trees of the celebrities featured in the first four BBC TV series; and a PDF 'taster' of the book Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopaedia of Genealogy, with an exclusive offer of 25 per cent off the book's RRP. The bargain single-disc edition costs £9.95 with a 30-day subscription to Ancestry.co.uk; plus the family tree printouts and video celebrity clips. The program is the same.
Reproduced from a review by James Taylor in Family History Monthly |
