What's New in Family Tree Maker 10

I last wrote about a new version in October 2001 some 12 months ago (see Victorian Gum Inc. News, Family Tree Maker Version 9.0, October 2001). Again I 'put my hand up' to be a beta tester (my seventh time) and downloaded 'beta 1' on 1 May 2002. Again, the beta testing program was similar to previous betas in that the testers got access to a password protected site where downloads could be made from plus there was a message board where the beta testers can share experiences as well receiving other information on the beta testing program. Also there is a bug-reporting site. Gum member Merv Leeding was also on the beta program, and given the new PDF features in version 10, Merv's knowledge was to prove invaluable to the whole program. He really tested the Beta Manager on PDF resulting in a much better program. Ask Merv about Type 1 Fonts.

So What is New in Version 10?

From Standard Ancestor tree to Descendant Fan tree, Family Tree Maker 10 lets you convert all your trees and reports to PDF. In addition, you can now save yourself time and printing and shipping costs by sending your PDF trees and reports to family and friends via e-mail. It's simple, just attach the PDF file to the e-mail and click to send. Whether your family members have Family Tree Maker or not, they will be able to view your family trees, read your reports and share the joy of discovering their unique family history with you. Preparing for the next family reunion, gathering, or holiday, just convert your favourite tree to PDF and take it to be professionally printed. It's that simple!

Adobe® Acrobat ® Reader® is required to view PDF files. This program may already be installed in your system. If not, go to www.adobe.com and follow their instructions to install it on your system. Note: Acrobat Reader is free!

2. NEW! Upload PDF to Home Page
Interested in giving your family and friends fast and easy access to your family history information regardless of their location? Look no further. In addition to the InterneTree, and HTML versions of your reports, Family Tree Maker 10 lets you upload PDF versions of your trees and reports to your family home page. Now you can share your family information exactly as you intended, complete with photos, images, captions, and more. Simply click on the Graphic Tree and upload your tree. It's easier than ever to share your most treasured memories with your loved ones. Family Tree Maker even lets you privatise information within your trees.

3. NEW! Standard Pedigree Tree
Expand your family heritage with the Standard Pedigree Tree. Filling in missing information has never been easier, just take your incomplete pedigree to your next visit to the library or National Archive and fill in the family facts that you find right on the form. Want to discover more about your heritage at the next family gathering? Just print a blank pedigree and complete it with the valuable information you gather from those that know about it. You can even convert your Standard Pedigree Tree to PDF format and send it via e-mail to your family members to help you fill in missing information.

4. NEW! Family Tree Templates
Create beautiful printouts using professionally designed Family Tree Templates. Family Tree Maker 10 lets you choose from a wide variety of pre-defined formats that you can apply to your trees. From Modern and Patriotic to Elegant and Scenic, Family Tree Maker helps you createheirloom quality trees to display and share your unique family history. Simply select the template you want and Family Tree Maker automatically applies it to your tree. You can even edit and save any changes you make to your tree after you apply the Family Tree Template. Plus,version 10 lets you easily apply the templates to previously saved trees.

5. NEW! Date Calculator
Want to calculate the date your great grand father was born? Just enter the information you know, marriage, death, or other event and Family Tree Maker 10 quickly calculates that date for you. Plus, you can even calculate the age of your family members at any given event, such as age at death if birth and death date are known, see the day of the week at any given date, or see an individuals age in years, months, and days. Once you have the date, simply copy it to your Family Page, Individual Facts Card or Facts Page. In addition, Family Tree Maker lets you change the individual who's birth you want to calculate without leaving the Date Calculator. Just select the individual you want from the Family Page, Individual Facts Card, and the Facts Page, and click the calculate button.

6. IMPROVED! Output to RTF
Family Tree Maker offers a comprehensive list of reports to help you document and share your family history information. With new version 10, you can easily customiseyour reports by outputting them to any standard word-processor. Simply export the report to RTF and make the changes you want.

7. IMPROVED! Photo-Editing
Preserve your valuable photos and documents. Family Tree Maker 10 offers more options to enhance your family images. In addition to the ability to crop, rotate, flip, and mirror your images and adjust contrast, version 10 now lets you correct red-eye and adjust the brightness and colour of your images. Preserving your precious family information has never been easier.

8. IMPROVED! Family File Statistics
View more information about your Family file at a glance. From the number of generations and marriages to the number of different surnames, Family Tree Maker 10 lets you see it all with just a click of your mouse.

9. XP Compatible
Family Tree Maker version 10 is now Windows® XP Compatible

10. IMPROVED! Program Help
To make it easier to answer your questions, we are continuing to enhance the Help features in Family Tree Maker. Search for information on specific features by simply entering a key word or phrase into the Index tab of the Help dialog box. In addition, Family Tree Maker now provides a Getting Started Manual in PDF format within the install CD-ROM for quick reference.

Okay, so let's go through them and try to see what really is there, and what it all means.

1. Output to PDF (Portable Document Format)

Figure 1

About time! This is the one we have been waiting for! This feature has been on otherprograms such as Legacy 4. Unless you have the $600 Adobe Acrobat ®1 (not to be confused with Acrobat Reader (which is free) or one of the Shareware PDF creators, you could not get most of the reports or charts out of Family Tree Maker as separate files. I have written about PDF often (see Victorian Gum Inc. News, Adobe PDF, July 1999) and A New Look at Books, March 2001).

Version 10 has a PDF creator that installs to your printer driver area when you load the program. (Figure 1). This PDF creator allows you to create PDF files by 'exporting' the report or chart.

Figure 2

What version 10 has done is to include a PDF creator (called Family Tree Maker Printer) that loads into your printer driver folder when you load version 10. When you invoke an export to PDF. This PDF creator intercepts the chart/report and creates a PDF file. This is all automatic and you will be asked for the name of the file and where you want to save it. (Figure 3:). When you quit version 10 it unloads the 'FTM Printer'. The PDF creator is actually a third party PDF creator produced by Amyuni. The printer can be adjusted by going to it once version 10 is loaded (Start>Settings> Printers selecting it and then Right click> Properties.

This allows you to make some adjustments to its properties, eg amount of image compression and some other stuff that will be covered in a future column. Note for new/most users, don't worry about this just use it as installed.

Figure 3

To use the facility is a simple as creating a chart or an FGS or whatever in the normal way and then Click on File>Export to PDF. This brings up a dialog box asking for a.name for the file and a save location. Add the details and then Save. Figure 3: The Chart or report is 'printed' as a PDF file. This file may be viewed and printed in Acrobat Reader or emailed etc. Basically PDF is a way to transfer information. When you quit Family Tree Maker 10 the Family Tree (PDF) Printer is uninstalled.

2. NEW! Upload PDF to Home Page

Figure 4

This option is an addition to the home page upload wizard. What it lets you do is specify a tree in PDF format etc to your home page. If you select it Family Tree Maker creates the tree, converts it to PDF then uploads it. Simple. Anyone can download the file and read it with Acrobat Reader.

3. NEW! Standard Pedigree Tree

Figure 5

This is similar to the 'standard' pedigree tree in PAF and the type that you send to a Family History Society. No boxes just the basic facts. This fixes a glaring omission. It can be further edited though if you wish.

4. NEW! Family Tree Templates

Figure 6

These are a range of templates that allow you to very quickly apply some interesting effects to any tree including ones previously saved. You can also use them as a base and further modify and save them. There are 10 templates, the 8 that you can see in Figure 6 plus 'Scenic' and 'Typewriter'. I had an 'argument' about 'Patriotic' on the beta site as it has a US flag in the background. I pointed out that it may not be patriotic to someone who is not American and to my mild surprise my gentle dig was noted and it is now titled 'US Flag' in the final release! The screen dump is from a beta version. New World and Elegant are two of my favourites and I have added them to my home page or go via the Gum website.

5. NEW! Date Calculator

Figure 7

Calculators everywhere! The date calculator can be accessed on the family page by simply clicking in a date field and you get a little calculator icon. Double clicking on this brings up a new date event calculator (Figure 7). If you clicked it in a birth date field it.calculates [say] the age of the person at a marriage or some other event. It even gives you the day of the month of the event. The calculator can also be accessed on the People Menu where it joins the Soundex and Relationship Calculators from previous versions. The calculations can be copied and pasted elsewhere.

6. IMPROVED! Output to RTF

Figure 8

RTF stands for Rich Text Format and is a standard that allows text to be exchanged between word processors etc., preserving the formatting and also allowing editing. The three genealogy reports have always been able to be exported as RTF and then opened and edited in a word processor, but this facility has been extended to the non-graphical reports from Family Tree Maker. These typically include the entire standard and custom reports on the Report Menu and you have the options to export as Acrobat PDF, RTF or ASCII, Text (or TXT).

So RTF allows formatting to be preserved and edited after exporting, whilst PDF preserves formatting but no editing. PDF in Family Tree Maker is essentially for exporting highly graphical output like charts, maps and the FGS where no later editing outside Family Tree Maker is possible. TXT is non-formatted text that makes for the most compact file and can be opened even in simple programs like Notepad.

7. IMPROVED! Photo-Editing

Figure 9

Image manipulation and graphics has always been strength in Family Tree Maker and they have taken it further to provide for more control of image quality when importing an image to the Scrapbook. Brightness Contrast and now (new) Saturation can be adjusted. 'Red Eye' removal is also now supported but a note of caution. Red eye removal (oval selection tool) is a bit tricky and there is no undo facility if you make a mistake, so keep a backup copy of your image!

8. IMPROVED! Family File Statistics

Figure 10

Yet another calculator! You have always been able to look at how many people in your file by going to Help>Family File Status or (Alt+F1). Now they have added some additional statistics including total number of marriages, average lifespan, earliest birthday as well as two calculators for total number of generations and total.number of different surnames. My only grizzle is that unlike the date calculator, you can't copy the data or get a surname report. This is annoying, as the program obviously has calculated the information but won't let you export it to the clipboard or anywhere else. You are restricted to a screen look-up.

9. XP Compatible

I guess that it says it all. Just make sure that your peripherals work as well under XP!

10. IMPROVED! Program Help

Family Tree Maker has greatly improved its help in both version 9 and continued it with version 10 and I encourage you to use it. As well the normal F1 context sensitive help is always available plus the on-line help under technical support from the Internet menu (providing that you are on-line). Again (as with version 9) there is a 104 page handbook and a 20 page guide on the installation CD. Both are PDF files and can be opened in Acrobat Reader. My suggestion is to copy both to your hard drive as a more convenient reference. There is also a small text file advising you to go to www.adobe.com to download Acrobat Reader if you don't already have it.

Conclusion

When I reviewed version 9 I was disappointed, as were many other long-time users, that good as it was, Family Tree Maker had slipped a little and the word 'complacent' came to mind. Not so this version. Whilst some of my grizzles have not been fixed (no formatting in Notes) the addition of PDF and RTF are very welcome. The new calculators are a nice touch as well as the photo editing although I will continue to use Paint Shop Pro as I have it and it has more edit ing facilit ies. The new templates will appeal to new users in particular as they provide a great set of charts plus they can be further edited and saved to incorporate personal touches.

The new version is worth it for the PDF capability alone. The PDF facility means that the average user will be able to export charts and reports in PDF without having to buy the somewhat expensive Adobe Acrobat. There are a couple of limitations in exporting Books in PDF, which is disappointing, but otherwise excellent.

As usual this is a first look and as experience builds I will comment more, but this one is recommended particularly if you don't have the full version of Adobe Acrobat.