In RM7 the Family view shows the Birth Date, Birth Place, Death Date & Death Place of children. In RM9 it just shows the birth year and death year. Is there a setting to turn on the additional information (I can’t find one) and if not could this information be added to the screen as a new feature?
You lose the webhints in the Descendant View for RM8 and RM9. I understand losing webhints for 6 or 7 generations. It just takes too long for the screen to come up. But keeping the webhints for 2 or 3 generations would be very helpful. Otherwise, you have to go back to the “new” Family View to see webhints.
The dates are left justified instead of being right justified in Descendant View for RM8 and RM9. The left justified dates are not lined up properly above each other and are much harder to read than are right justified dates.
The indentations are really not done quite correctly in Descendant View for RM8 and RM9. In many situations it makes it difficult to distinguish children from the spouses of children. (I have posted screenshots of this problem. The indentations are really not at all the same as the RM7 indentations. It really is very difficult sometimes to distinguish children from spouses of children.)
It would be very helpful to provide a “classic” Family View option in RM9 that looks more like RM7’s family view. There would be full birth dates, birth places, full death dates, and death places. The data would be in columns so everything would be nicely lined up. The “classic” Family View would lose the ability to show up to one spouse for each child. The “new” Family view would still be supported and would still be the default.
It would be very helpful to provide a “classic” Family View option in RM9 that looks more like RM7’s family view. There would be full birth dates, birth places, full death dates, and death places. The data would be in columns so everything would be nicely lined up. The “classic” Family View would lose the ability to show up to one spouse for each child. The “new” Family view would still be supported and would still be the default.
There is room at the top for a “classic” view button. Wouldn’t that be great to have!
As an advocate for the classic Family View, I would suggest that there is more to it than just getting more detailed information back about the children. The classic view also includes the handy Rearrange Children button. The Rearrange Children facility in the upper part of the RM8 and RM9 left side panel is nowhere near as handy to use. And more importantly, the classic view includes a very different look and feel. Namely, the classic Family View has the look and feel of a spreadsheet with rows and columns and square corners and it gets a lot more children on the screen at the same time. These are all good things.
RM8 and now RM9 has moved to a more modern look and feel without rows and columns, with less data on the screen, with excessive space between the children, and with rounded corners for the boxes. When the RM8 Community Preview first came out, I sent a screenshot of the new Family View to a very close friend of mine and asked him what he thought. I did not try to steer him in any direction at all. He is a commercial artist and a very expert computer user and he has never used or even seen any genealogy software before. Nevertheless, he was quite negative about the screen I had sent him because of the rounded corners and the lack of rows and columns and the space between the children. By having never been a user of genealogy software, he didn’t notice the lack of data or the lack of a Rearrange Children button. But from an artistic and esthetic point of view, he was very critical of the new modern style.
I think the new “modern style” RM8 and RM9 Descendant View has many of the same problems. It comes closer to having rows and columns than does the new Family View, but the boxes outlining the rows and columns are missing. And more importantly, the indentations are all wrong. I could live without the boxes that define the rows and columns, but the indentations really need to be fixed. Also, the Descendant View set to 2 generations is suggested for users who like the classic Family View. But Descendant View no longer has WebHints. We need that back as well.
Does RM10 support the “classic” family view similar to RM7? I find the RM7 view to be the simplest way to show a family with birth and death dates and locations of all children.