Tuesday 2 August 2011

Family Tree Maker 2012 - trial and syncing

There's an interesting blog post by Tamura Jones at www.tamurajones.net/FamilyTreeMaker2012PublicBeta.xhtml detailing a public, yet very unannounced, beta trial of Family Tree Maker 2012.

Every year since 2008 Family Tree Maker has been re-released without failure, with virtually the same functions from year to year, prompting many to ask "why an annual update?". The only real exception was the difference between FTM 2008 and FTM 2009, with the former such a disaster at launch that FTM 2009 had to be a significant improvement for fear of the product dying a death.

The blog post points out two big developments with the forthcoming FTM 2012. The first is an apparent beta version available for free download - a novelty in itself in that FTM does not usually allow an online download of the software for trial purposes. The second is a new syncing feature, that allows you to update your online hosted tree on Ancestry in real time with your computer package (as with file sharing programmes such as Dropbox).

No word from Ancestry itself yet, but Tamura's post offers some great insight into what is to come.

Incidentally, FTM 2011 is a good programme now. It is hungry for disk space, requiring about 450MB, and a bit slow to launch, but does now do what is expected of a family tree programme, although it is not my own package of choice.

UPDATE: Screengrabs are available on Randy Seaver's Californian based Genea-Musings blog at www.geneamusings.com/2011/08/family-tree-maker-2012-is-in-public.html. Incidentally, the beta file is no longer available for download - sorry folks, a case of blink and you miss it!

Chris

5 comments:

  1. I can't open this page. It's saved in too high a version of code acording to Windows Help files; - I'm using IE7. File Type: Hyper Text Markup Language

    File Extension: .xhtml

    The usual is just .html The system at work is controlled so no downloads are possible so I can't avail myself of a conversion programme.

    Would it be possible to have a version in standard html?

    Cheers,
    G,Lass

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Alternatively drop me your email addy and I can maybe cut and paste and post to you?

    Chris

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  4. I've tried in Opera on my wee netbook and can see the page fine now thanks. Wish we had another browser on the staff pcs!

    Sad to see that in the time it's taken me to faff about trying to open the page the beta trial has gone.

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  5. I think it was probably gone before I made my first post, sadly! Check Randy Seavers' blog post for some screengrabs though - I suspect more are on their way.

    Chris

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