Family tree timelines

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As I talked about in my previous post, I created a simple family tree visualisation program to let me know which of my ancestors I have the most interest for.

I also prototyped up a timeline view - in the above image. It’s probably pretty obvious that it’s a prototype, as there are no labels to identify any of the individuals.

Windows 8 Metro Development Experience

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been running the Windows 8 developer preview for a few weeks, and thought I’d blog about my experiences in converting a Silverlight app I’ve written into a Metro one. I’ll first describe the app, then my experiences developing it.

The App

The application is a family tree viewing application. It came about as I’ve found a few branches my family tree back to the 1600s (with help hooking up with other people on GenesReunited). It isn’t very friendly if you want to see the whole tree as it shuffles all of the individuals around to minimise the screen real estate, which is good for printing, but not so good to make sense of the tree. I was interested in seeing which of my ancestors I had the most history for, and which I wanted to research next, so I created an app to show ancestors without siblings, and to favour clarity over screen real estate.

Genealogy on Gary Evans website

Family tree timelines

Windows 8 Metro Development Experience

The App