2010-11-03 Gaia Family Tree Features
Gaia Family Tree 1.0
Gaia Family Tree
Getting Started dialog box
The first time you start Gaia Family Tree, the application does not only
bother you for the name and email address the installer already prompted you
for, but also shows a Getting Started dialog box. This dialog box offers five
ways to start using the application; create your family tree
from scratch,
import/export files
, view an existing family tree
, create an online account
and
online search
.
The Getting Started dialog box provides a subheading and a descriptive
sentence for each choice. The additional information shown for create an online account
suggests that Gaia Family Tree allows you to backup your tree online, as is indeed the case.
I do not particularly like Wizards and Getting Started dialogs that I did not
ask for, but luckily this Getting Started dialog box includes a checkbox with the all-important Please, do not
show this window again
option. If you do want to see it again, just choose
Help | Getting Started.
However, checking that box does not really get rid of the helpful
start-up dialog;
check it, and Gaia Family Tree will show a Welcome dialog box instead of the
Getting Started dialog box. Sigh.
The Welcome dialog box has four choices: Create my Family Tree
, Online
Search
, Open Existing Family Tree
and View Tutorial
.
help
The View Tutorial
button is really a pull-down menu with two choices. Yes, the dialog box button is a drop-down
menu. The first choice on that drop-down menu, Getting Started
, brings up the
Getting Started dialog box again. The second choice, Help
, starts your default browser without asking your permission to do so, to show the online Gaia Family Tree User Guide. There is no help file, only the online user guide.
It is remarkable that four of the eight sections the user guide is divided into are about installation, deinstallation, activation and registration. Didn't it ever occur to them that it might smarter, easier and user-friendlier to keep it simple?
other Welcome buttons
The Create My Family Tree
button starts an empty tree family tree. It immediately prompts you
to enter the first person, but allows you to dismiss that dialog box.
The Online Search
button brings Gaia Family Tree's online search screen.
The Open Existing Family
Tree button is a drop-menu too, with three
menu choices: Open From File
, Import from GEDCOM
and Sample Family
.
The unconventional user interface has no advantage, it is just odd.
menu
Gaia Family Tree's main menu looks a bit unconventional too, but it works as you
would expect.
An uncommon menu item is Skins
, which allows you to choose between
GreenSkin
and BlackSkin
. Gaia Family Tree is skinnable. GreenSkin and BlackSkin are contained in the files GreenSkin.dll and BlackSkin.dll. This allows
adding additional skins without bloating the main program. The green skin is the
default. If you opt to use BlackSkin, Gaia Family Tree will remember
your choice.
The other things I noticed while browsing the menu are that Gaia Family Tree
has an undo feature, and Web Resources
menu. That menu, the Online Search
button in the Welcome dialog and the horrible installation experience all suggest a strong web orientation. The menu does not offer any reporting options or consistency checks. A quick try of some features suggests that it is very limited genealogy application. The FamilySearch Certified
logo in the upper right corner of the window suggests that it was created as a Windows-based front-end for New FamilySearch (NFS), and it certainly isn't much more than that.
online backup
Gaia Family Tree offers online backup of your projects on their site. Both backing up to their site and restoring from their site seem to work fine, but painfully slow; it takes a quarter minute for a file with just individual in it. With backup and restore speeds like that, this feature is not very practical.
To use the backup feature, you need to log in to the Gaia web site from
within the application. Logging in, backup and restore are all done from the Web Resources
menu. You log in using your name and the personal password provided in the email
you receive after registration.
There is no option to change your password, nor any option to delete projects from Lulu's servers. There is no privacy policy either. That, combined with the slow performance, makes four good reasons to avoid this backup feature.
looks
The Black Skin is too dark overall for my taste, and I am bit disappointed that Lulu did not include a small tool for creating your own skins, but there is no denying that Gaia Family Tree looks good.
Gaia Family Tree offers three view of your family tree, a complete view, a lineal view and a pedigree chart. The lineal view shows less individuals than the complete view, but is otherwise the same.
complete view
The complete view shows everyone who's related in any way. I tried to figure
out what would happen if you had fragments. It seems impossible to create
separate fragments in Gaia Family Tree. Except for the first individual, everyone you add must be
related to someone else. I tried removing the relationship, but that did not
work either. Gaia Family Tree put up a messagebox, There are some persons which are
not connected to the tree. Delete them?
, and when I choose Cancel
, it did delete
the relationship at all, it simply refused to do anything.
When I choose OK
, Gaia Family Tree deleted the second individual. When I
click on the first individual again, I got another messagebox, Current person
has changes. Would you like to save changes and change person?
an when i choose OK
,
it produced yet another messagebox: Application Error. Do you want to Send Error Information?
.
So much for the reliable solutions, with a focus on offering the friendliest
user-experience possible
; within minutes of trying something basic, the application fails.
limited genealogy
The apparent refusal to allow multiple fragments is a rather limited approach to genealogy. Most genealogy database contain disconnected fragments, but Lulu Software seems in complete denial of that fact. It made me wonder what Gaia would do when I imported a database with multiple separate trees. That sure made me wonder what would happen if I imported a random genealogy database. Alas, attempt to figure that out failed for other reasons.
Gaia Family Tree is so basic that it is hardly a genealogy application.
simplistic application
Gaia Family Tree isn't an intolerant application like PAF is. It does not
fight attempts to input a same-sex marriage. It is simplistic like PAF is:
marriage is the only relationship it supports. When you add both a father and
mother, it does not immediately show the connection yet, but when you look at
the relationship tab for either parent, you'll note that Gaia Family Tree
assumes marriage. It supports three marriage types: Current
, Former
and Civil
.
How to enter a current (civil) marriage is not clear, and how to enter a church
marriage for ancestors is not clear either.
Gaia Family Tree is so basic that it is hardly a genealogy application. The details screen for an individual allows recording date and place for birth and death, but does not support baptism or burial. Gaia Family Tree does not support any other partnership than marriage. Gaia Family Tree supports marriage, but does not support marriage notices. It does not even allow recording stillborn children of unknown gender. You cannot merely add a child, you have to add a son or daughter, the idea that the gender might be unknown seems foreign to Lulu Software.
By the way, take a good look at the details screen. Notice how Lulu expects you to enter dates. There are two separate fields for the day, there is a pull-down menu for the month, and there are four separate fields for the year. You cannot simply enter a year, you have to enter each digit into a separate field. Admittedly, the cursor automatically jumps from one field to the next, but why not keep it simple with a single field?
looking good
The one thing that Gaia Family Tree has going for it is that it looks goods. The complete genealogy view is very nice. All views allow zooming in and out. The next screenshot shows the sample family tree, at minimum zoom. The left year slider at the bottom left corner has been moved up from 1840 to 1845 and the right year slider has been moved down from 2010 to 1962. Individuals born within the year range 1845 - 1962 are shown clearly, individuals born before or after have been greyed.
The sample family is tiny; it contains only a few dozen persons. Yet even this tiny database results in a display that, even at minimum zoom, is already too wide. That sure makes you wonder how Gaia Family Tree display a small, medium or large genealogy. Performance with the tiny sample file is excellent, but how well does it perform with a small, medium or large genealogy? For this tiny sample database, Gaia Family Tree's memory usage isn't a problem, but how much memory does it claim for a medium size genealogy? As usual, I tried to answer these questions by importing a small and a large GEDCOM file.
GEDCOM import
1 MB GEDCOM
The GEDCOM Import
and Export
menu items are not on the File
menu, but on the
Tool
menu.
An attempt to import the 1 MB GEDCOM was unsuccessful. The GEDCOM import
procedure seems to be of rather low quality. Gaia Family Tree did not display a
progress dialog box, but became unresponsive instead. After about ten seconds
Gaia Family Tree put up a message box that claimed that the Selected file is
corrupt or not supported!
- and that is all it does. Gaia Family Tree does
not bother to tell you why it failed to import, and does not create an import
log at all.
100k INDI GEDCOM
An attempt to import HundredThousand.ged did not fare any better. There was
no progress dialog box and the program became not responding
in seconds. It
took about fifteen seconds for the Selected file is corrupt or not supported!
to appear.
According to Gaia Family Tree, PAF 5.2.18 ANSEL GEDCOM files are corrupt or not supported; according to me their
ostensible GEDCOM import does not work.
Gaia Family Tree does not even import its own ostensible GEDCOM files!
supported character encodings
The Gaia Family Tree documentation says nothing about supported character
encodings. I tried to determining the supported encoding by trying several tiny
test files, but for each file I tried, Gaia Family Tree told me that the Selected file is
corrupt or not supported!
, so I decided on another approach. The simplest
approach to determine what Gaia Family Tree supports is to create a small test
project, export it, and have a look.
It seems that Lulu Software is well aware that the GEDCOM
support in Gaia Family Tree is not up to snuff; every time you export to GEDCOM,
even when you export an empty file, it throws up a message box to tell you that When exporting
data to GEDCOM file format some data may be lost or modified
.
By the way, that is a rather remarkable admission. It is sadly not entirely
unusual for GEDCOM export to be incomplete, or to use non-standard tags that
other applications do not support, and thus data gets lost, but why would an
export modify your data?
Gaia Family Tree does not offer any export options, so Gaia Family Tree's
GEDCOM export presumably always uses the same character encoding, perhaps the only encoding it supports. However, when I tried importing the
GEDCOM that Gaia Family Tree itself created, Gaia Family Tree told me that the Selected file is
corrupt or not supported!
; Gaia Family Tree does not even import its own
ostensible GEDCOM files!
0 HEAD
1 GEDC
2 VERS 5.5
1 CHAR UNICODE
0 @I0@ INDI
1 NAME FirstName MiddleName/LastName/
1 SEX M
1 BIRT
1 DEAT
0 TRLR
The inset shows Gaia Family Tree's output for a very simple file. Notice that it
does not even support the GEDCOM tags for given names and family names, and that
it exports BIRT and DEAT even if there are no subtags.
The GEDCOM header is incomplete. It does not even list Gaia Family Tree as the source, the application that created the file, and it does not list the destination either. It does not mention the creator of the database, it does not even include the creation date of the file.
The Gaia Family Tree GEDCOM header claims that the file is in UNICODE format, which is confused
FamilySearch-speak for UTF-16, as if UTF-8 isn't Unicode. That is a perfectly legal
GEDCOM 5.5 encoding, but it is wrong anyway. The GEDCOM file that Gaia Family
Tree produced is not in UTF-16 encoding at all.
The file shown is pure ASCII. A few experiments with
non-ASCII characters convinced me that the encoding Gaia uses is UTF-8, alas
without the Byte Order Mark (BOM) it should be using. The
UTF-8 encoding is the perfect choice for a Unicode application, but even if
that header said CHAR UTF-8 instead of CHAR UNICODE, it would still
be wrong; the UTF-8 encoding is illegal in GEDCOM 5.5, the header should specify GEDCOM
version 5.5.1 for the UTF-8 encoding to be legal.
Gaia Family Tree is a well-chromed turd.
conclusion
Lulu aims to provide simple, accessible and reliable solutions, with a focus
on offering the friendliest user-experience possible. Sadly, their aim is less
than impressive.
The installation and registration procedure is needlessly complex, rather
annoying and plain unreliable. Support is completely non-existent.
They advertise with five languages, but you get only one. There is no Windows help file. In fact, there is no help file at all. There is a user guide, but it is not included with the application. It is online only.
Gaia Family Tree is not just light on features, Gaia Family Tree is incredibly simplistic. It has just three views and supports just a few basic events, and that's it. Marriage is the only partnership it recognises. There are no consistency checks. It does not produce reports. It cannot generate web sites.
The features worth mentioning aren't too hot. Lulu allows you to backup your project to their site, but it is slow, you cannot change your password, there is no privacy policy and you cannot remove projects from their server, so this feature is disrecommend.
The one thing that Gaia Family Tree has going for it is that it looks good.
It is brainless beauty; very glamorous and not much else.
Its complete tree view works well for the tiny extract of the Windsor genealogy
they included as a sample. It is not even possible to find out whether it works
with a medium genealogy, as the GEDCOM import does not work and the ostensible
GEDCOM output is rubbish. The GEDCOM import and export are so bad, that Gaia
Family Tree cannot even read its own ostensible GEDCOM files.
Gaia Family Tree is FamilySearch certified
. That says nothing about
Gaia Family Tree and a lot about the so-called FamilySearch Certification. Gaia
Family Tree is a well-chromed turd.
import speed
Windows Vista machine
| file | 1 MB GEDCOM | 100k INDI GEDCOM |
|---|---|---|
| time | FAIL | FAIL |
| time in seconds | ∞ | ∞ |
| INDI per second | 0 | 0 |
| bytes per second | ∞ | ∞ |
product details
| property | value |
|---|---|
| product | Gaia Family Tree |
| version | 1.2.0 |
| company | Lulu Software |
| website | Gaia Family Tree |
| price | email address |
| requirement | Windows XP or later |
| note | non-existent support |
| Verdict | well-chromed turd |
| Rating | glamour |
links
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Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.