How big are the gaps in your WikiTree?

Question

It started out as a simple little tool to help me open a WikiTree profile on my mobile, and then show it to someone in my family.

But with some excellent G2G feedback it is now helping people see the gaps in their WikiTree.

By default you can see 6 generations of ancestors - and sadly this shows up plenty of gaps in my WikiTree.

Take a look at Benjamin Franklin for example.

Tip: Click on any profile to bring it to the centre

Tip: Click on HELP if fractal ancestors are new to you.

Congratulations if you know all of your ancestors out to 6 generations - I am envious. But if you are feeling smug then click on the settings button and select a depth=8 and see how you go with that. If you are of Royal stock then you might consider depth=10 (on the biggest screen in the palace).

Tip: Adjust your browser zoom with ctrl-shift  + 

You can also show the gaps in birth dates, or birth locations for example. Click on the settings button and chose the data that you want to show on the fractal.

Hope you like it!

This is new, and there are bugs - so all feedback is most welcome.

Comments

This looks similar to what the Fractal Family tree app gives you: https://www.wikitree.com/apps/Franklin-1#name=Franklin-1&view=fractal

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Sure is Rob! It was Gregs fractal WikiTree App that inspired my little tool. The idea of the fractal layout was new to me and quite fascinating. I woke up wondering if I could use the idea to pack a lot of ancestors onto a really small mobile screen. And then I wondered how I could pack a lot of descendants on a mobile screen as well. And then Daphne wanted to cram a lot of ancestors onto a big screen.

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I can't find this tool anywhere, HELP?  For starters what is it called?

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lol, envy ill becomes you, French Canadian trees regularly go 10/12 generations back.  Interesting tool you have there.  Gives different display than others.

John Albertini, click on the Benjamin Franklin link above, you will see a place in the page that allows you to enter another WikiTree ID, worked for me.

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Wow! 12 generations. I could tile a bathroom with that!

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i tried to use this today and am getting prompted to login -- are you going to bring it back online?

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Thank you for asking. I would like mikitree.org to be back online, but unfortunately I don't have time to make that happen right now.

Thank you everyone for your help building a new view of a wikitree profile. We got it looking pretty good, and I threw it up on mikitree.org so that everyone could enjoy it while I was (am) distracted by another couple of projects.

mikitree.org was free to use, the code is open-source, and it draws the data from the public WikiTree API. However, it turned out that the profile images and biographies can only be displayed by WikiTree (terms of service) - so I had to take it offline. This is disappointing.

There are perhaps a couple of ways forward:

1. Modify mikitree.org to omit photos and biographies. This is relatively easy, and could hopefully fit within WikiTree TOS.

2. Rewrite about 50% of the mikitree code and publish the new view in the WikiTree Apps area. This would probably take me a couple of weeks.

However, I was really aiming for a simple, readily accessible profile view for my friends and family (more so than for genealogists). So these couple of alternatives are a bit sad.

Hopefully I will find some time in a couple of months to work on this again. Or anybody is welcome to grab the code and take it somewhere cool.

Answer 1

Great Tool! It is inspiring me to fill in some of the gaps. It is a great way to visualize them.

Answer 2

6 generations sounds beyond fantasy to me.  I recently completed 3 generations and have 3 of 16 in 4th generation - and that's after 9 years work and with a lot of help from wonderful WikiTree members.

Comments

And you have made a start on your 4th generation! I was lucky enough to inherit 3+ generations - but the real magic happened when my WikiTree touched another part of WikiTree. So far I have the names of 5 generations of ancestors - with more thanks to other WikiTreers.

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I haven't connected by blood yet - I only have 1 connection path and that's through 6 marriages, but I thought it was magic when that happened!

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Gaile, I keep trying to get some of my New York Jewish friends interested in Wikitree to get you more relatives on here. One day...

Answer 3

Nice work John! I do have a few suggestions however. 

1. [Edit: ignore this, I missed the ctrl-shift-+ instruction :)]At least for larger trees (8 generations and up?), don't limit the tree to fit on the screen, but rather draw the tree so that all names are still readable and allow the user to scroll left and right similar to what they currently can scroll up and down to see everything.  You might even consider giving the user some control over how wide they want to make the display area - maybe similar to what I am doing here: https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/smit641/ale/index.html (something I am still playing with).
2. Currently there is no way to see more detail about a person other than opening their fractal tree (by clicking on them). Maybe tie the open tree action to shift-click and let a click open the WT profile in a new tab (or vice versa). Maybe also consider having a tooltip appear when hovering over a person, giving full name, birth- and death dates and maybe locations.
3. There seems to be an issue with the layout if one goes from 10 back to 8. For me, at 8 I can see names in all the populated boxes. At 10 I can't (hence my suggestion 1 :)), but then when I go back to 8, some boxes, which had names the previous time, no linger has.

But still, good work!

Comments

Mmm, the browser zoom seemed to do what I wanted at some point (I could scroll left and right), but then no longer did, so I think my suggestion 1 might still be valid. Zooming out does, however, help to make some labels visible at 10 generations. :)

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How strange! I rather thought that constraining the fractal to the screen was a feature. I have added a Full Monte button under settings just for you 

Thank you! Shift-click is an excellent way to provide power-user options without cluttering the interface for the casual user. I will kick the can in this direction at some point.

Yes there was some weirdness when reducing fractal-depth - thank you. I have fixed the obvious problem - but it is still possible to get tangled up without trying too hard. Best approach for now is to simply reload the page.

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LOL, one's feature is another's bug. No biggie! Also might have to do with one's expectations I guess. :)

Answer 4

Thanks for the app!

The first profile I entered, Cornelis van Hoof "Van Hoof-117", immediately showed a bug in the app. Profiles with a space in the ID aren't shown. Converting the space into an underscore also doesn't work and when I click on someone with a space in their surname on my tree on your app, it also doesn't work.

Comments

Damn this annoying space bug! I thought I dealt with that a couple of weeks back. Hopefully I did a better job this time.

Cornelis van Hoof

Thank you. Please let me know if you spot any others. There are currently 2 other bugs that I know about ;-)

You certainly need to enter the WikiTree ID correctly (including the _) as you would get from the WikiTree profile page.

BTW your personal profile will not load - but due to the privacy setting.

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Thanks! It works fine now.

Answer 5

HELP When I tried this it only opened 3 generations of ancestors not 6 I hit the settings button and don’t see a spot to see more generations and I know I have at least 6 generations done and then some I am using an IPad if that makes a difference 

Thanks

Christopher Hoff 

Comments

Hi Christopher - yes your WikTree certainly goes well beyond 6 gen in the Hoff and Filmore lines. I have not tested on an IPad so I am interested in what you see. Please try opening this link and let me know if you can scoll down past the photo of Warren. Also, when you click the settings button does it go green?

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I can go past the picture when I tap the settings button nothing opens I just get a green line around the center box. And when I open mine I don’t see a picture. But I do see more then I did when I first opened this up maybe it is just slow on my iPad.

Thank you for your help

Answer 6

I love the tool.  I was doing pretty well out to the sixth generation; only a three or four missing.

Comments

better than me! 

Answer 7

Pennie-22 (nhoj.info)  here's mine  Please contact me if we relate.  

Answer 8

FEATURE REQUEST

I notice that no information is displayed in the pink or blue box if there is not enough room to display the name properly within the size of the colored box.  May I suggest that the correct information be made available on hover?  Perhaps a checkmark (or initials) where the name should be displayed would also let us know that there is a profile there.

Also, I notice that grey areas are displayed where no profile is available for that generational ancestor.  May I suggest those missing profiles be replaced with dark pink or dark blue boxes to indicate missing profiles?  I ask this because large areas of grey is confusing to me.

THANK YOU for an interesting way to display family trees.

Comments

The fractal ancestor layout was a new idea to me just a month ago - inspired by Gregs Fractal Family Tree. It takes a bit of getting used to - so I am very interested in ideas to make it more intuitive. My particular aim is to use the fractal idea to present a WikiTree profile on a small mobile screen where space is severely restricted. The big-screen stuff is a bit of an (happy) unintended outcome.

The current implementation of the fractal indicates that a profile exists by showing a pink/blue box (white if gender unknown). 

Providing the full profile details on hover is a pretty good idea. Hover is not really effective on mobile touch screens unfortunately. Also there is another idea floating around - to use shift-click to provide access to power-user options. It will take some care to get all of these ideas to behave nicely together.

Providing Initials when there is insufficient space for the full name is also a pretty interesting idea. I will have a play around with this.

Populating the grey areas with darker pink/blue boxes is another interesting idea. I think it may well make the fractal more comprehensible by continuation of the fractal pattern. We need to have a look on screen - but I suspect grey outline boxes may work better. 

One of the unexpected outcomes (for me) was that WikiTree Members started posting "thank you I can see the gaps in my tree" and this feedback inspired my question "how big are your gaps?" I never expected people to be more interested in the gaps than the know ancestors. Perhaps because I designed this tool to show a WikiTree profile on my mobile to someone at a family gathering.

Thanks heaps for your ideas, time and interest :-)

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I implemented falling back to showing the Initial when the Name will not fit in the ancestor fractal - but the result was not pleasing. It was reasonably effective when this strategy just came into effect - and showed a few Initials. But as screen size was reduced (or depth increased), and more pressure came on, a lot of Initials were displayed and visual clutter mounted rapidly. 

When I tested on my own modest WikiTree of just 5-6 generations I found that the Initials did not help me orient very much, even though I am relatively familiar with the names.

So I have parked this idea for now. The code is there for future-self to revisit.

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Hey Peggy! I implemented color into the fractal gaps - and very happy with the result. Somewhere between pink/blue and background grey. Thank you! 

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Really nice.  Thanks.

Answer 9

BUG REPORT

Profile used for testing:  Berntson-19

Test case:  Test show priority settings

Expected result:  When selecting the settings icon, then de-selecting middle name, display shows for each profile:  last name, first name only.  Then select middle initial: display shows lastname, firstname, middle initial.

Actual result:  1) Using the above scenario, display shows only first name, last name for each profile. (See Curley Berntson.)

2) Before and after the above scenario, for last names too long to display properly, only firstname is displayed. (See Tolv, Jacob, Maria, and Ragnhild surrounding Randi Jahnsdatter.)

3) Regardless of which priority is selected, name order does not change, first initial, middle initial never is displayed,

BUG REPORT

Expected result:  Change selections within settings icon.  The change to the display matches the selected or de-selected choice.  Change the WikiTree ID and select Go.  New display matches previously set settings.  New settings list matches previously set settings.

Actual result:  All settings return to default.

Comment:  How is "priority" meant to be used?

Comments

Thanks heaps Peggy for the Developers bug report. Makes it easy.

I did a big tidy up in this code area and fixed a number of problems. Thank you. This has improved the behaviour of the "show priority" check boxes and fixed the first, first_initial, middle & middle_initial problems that you identified. You may need to refresh cache to see al of the fixes (ctrl-shift-R)

The show priority term needs some explanation - and probably some help insitue for the curious and confused. The site attempts to stuff as much data as possible in the very limited space available (particularly on mobile). By default, the show-priority has checked last_name, first_name and middle_name. So when the browser screen is resized (or mobile rotated) the code begins stuffing last_name from the centre (generation 0) and works its way out to the outer periphery. Next up is first_name - stuffing from gen-0 outwards. And finally middle_name.

This sometimes results in a curious outcome where Torstensdatter will not fit in the first pass, but Karen will fit in the second pass.

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The show_priority settings are also now retained when loading a new WikiTree ID.

Again, you may need to refresh cache to see al of the fixes (ctrl-shift-R)

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I like it.  Thanks.

Answer 10

Tool seems to be down at the moment. It sits there in the "Loading" page until it finally gives a 504 timeout message.

Comments

Thanks Rob. There was an error on the server around the time you posted while processing Presbury-42. There is something odd going on with this WikiTree ID that I will try and figure out. Was this perhaps the WikiTree ID that you were attempting to load? If not do you recall which WikiTree-ID that you were trying to load?

Alternatively - I loaded a few updates a few hours before you posted. It may be that clearing your browser cache might fix the problem. On many browsers, you can simply go to the page have cache problems and press the key combination ctrl-shift-R.

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This weirdness with Presbury-42 is currently disrupting the whole line down thru Presbury-42 Luce-771 Luce-91 Cowing-560 Cowing-181 Cowen-180 to Cowen-182. it would appear that Carolyn Cowen (orphaned profile) has married her own (private) son. This currently creates an endless loop in my little tool as it attempts to display descendants. I think there is a relatively simple change that I can make to avoid the problem.

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OK - the endless loop is fixed.

But I am pretty sure that this is an error in the Cowen-182 profile. Not so much the Carolyn married her son - but that her private son is his own father.

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Alright, I'll try it again. For the record, I just clicked on the Benjamin Franklin link at the top.

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Yes, that works now.  Takes a few seconds to collect the information, so I thought it was still frozen at first, but then it came through.

Very cool format, easy to see at a glance where your trees end.