2012-12-19 RootsMagic 6

biggest improvement is elsewhere

date	name	version
2003-02-04	RootsMagic 1.0	1.03
2004-03-01	FormalSoft Inc becomes RootsMagic Inc
2004-05-24	RootsMagic 2.0	2.0
2005-09-08	RootsMagic 3.0	3.0
2009-01-03	RootsMagic 4 Limited Beta	4.0.0.27
2009-03-04	RootsMagic 4 Public Beta	4.0.0.158
2009-03-25	RootsMagic Standard Edition 4.0	4.0.1.0
2009-11-18	RootsMagic Essentials	4.0.7.0
2011-11-08	RootsMagic 5	5.0.0.2
2012-11-19	RootsMagic 6	6.0.0.0
2012-12-17	RootsMagic for iDevices	1.0

RootsMagic 1.0 was released more than ten years ago, early in 2003. After three major releases in fairly quick succession, the company took its time to rebuild the product. RootsMagic 4 was introduced through a Limited Beta, a Public Beta and a long RootsMagic 4 Unwrapped series on the RootsMagic blog.
For years, RootsMagic provided free trial editions, that limited your databases to just 50 individuals. About half a year after the release of RootsMagic 4, a free edition of RootsMagic, called RootsMagic Essentials was introduced. Since then, RootsMagic Essential releases have kept pace with RootsMagic Standard Edition releases. There are two editions, but there is just one RootsMagic product; RootsMagic defaults to RootsMagic Essential, and a registration key upgrades it to RootsMagic Standard Edition.

multi-lingual user interface

The recently releases RootsMagic 6 really is the third release of the product first released as RootsMagic 4, and ever since RootsMagic 4 was released, I've been looking forward to a multi-lingual release. That RootsMagic would become available in multiple languages was announced by Bruce Buzbee in his RootsMagic 4 Unwrapped series. In his 2008 Oct 29 blog post he wrote:

Shortly after the release of version 4.0, we will be releasing tools to allow the translation of RootsMagic into other languages. We will provide more information about this then, and will be looking for volunteers interested in helping out with this important project.

That promise, that a multi-lingual interface would be provided soon was made more than four years ago. During that time, I've bugged Bruce Buzbee about it several times, and they're still planning to make RootsMagic multi-lingual.

Android and Apple apps

RootsMagic 5 was released late in 2011. The first 2012 blog post on the RootsMagic blog, New Year’s Resolutions for 2012, revealed some of the goals and resolutions for 2012. An image of an Apple iPad and iPhone, both displaying the RootsMagic logo, accompanied their text about new platforms:

The technology world is changing, and we are working hard to keep up with those changes. For the past several years, we’ve been laying the groundwork to bring RootsMagic (and our other products) to new platforms and even new devices. Like you, we know how important it is to have your information where and when you want it. So we’ve been busy in our secret underground laboratories working on some very exciting new tools.

That blog post led many to anticipate Android and Apple apps within the year. Between that post and the release of RootsMagic 6.0, no RootsMagic apps have appeared. On 2012 Dec 17, about a month after the release of RootsMagic 6, the RootsMagic blog announced the RootsMagic App for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, and promised that RootsMagic for Android would be released in the near future.

RootsMagic 6 Beta

There was a small RootsMagic 6 Beta, but it was remarkable brief; the first RootsMagic 6 Beta was provided on 2012 Nov 10, and RootsMagic 6 was officially released on 2012 Nov 19.
That does not imply that the Beta test was useless; there was one new feature that I liked enough to criticise it so thoroughly and severely, that, although I was the only one who criticised it, RootsMagician Bruce Buzbee decided to pull it from the 6.0 release.
I'm pretty sure that Bruce was looking forward to releasing and demonstrating this new feature, and that postponing it wasn't a decision he wanted to make, but in the end he agreed with me that it was not ready for prime time.
Expect to see a useful new feature in RootsMagic 6.1 or 6.2.

what's new

RootsMagic 4

RootsMagic 4 was a complete rewrite that improved on RootsMagic 3 by offering many new features. It is the first version of RootsMagic to be Unicode based and features excellent support for character sets and encodings. It introduced a spell checker, a place name database, geocoding, DNA support, EE-style citations and RootsMagic To-Go. A new feature I like very much is that RootsMagic 4 can shows alternate names in indexes.

The RootsMagic 4 release has been covered in quite some detail, in articles about RootsMagic 4 previews, detailed looks at several major RootsMagic 4 features, including its GEDCOM support, web pages and consistency checks, and finally, a general RootsMagic 4 review.

RootsMagic 5

Major features new in RootsMagic 5 are the Timeline View, County Check, the Research Manager, and Media Tagging.
The Timeline View is something several competing products offer as well; it shows major events in person's life.
The County Check feature is not unlike Legacy Family Tree 7's US County Verifier feature, but it is not the same. When the County Check feature is enabled, RootsMagic will, when you enter a place name, check whether a county existed on the date of the event, and will do so for American, Canadian, U.K. and Australian place names.
The Research Manager let's you keep a research log that shows you what research you've already done for particular research objectives.
Media tagging is the ability to tag photos,videos and other media with names, places or whatever else you find handy.

RootsMagic's own blog post for RootsMagic 5.0 mentions the On This Day feature, but I do not consider that a major feature. The introduction of Database Tools seems more important to me; the database tools let you test database integrity, rebuild indexes and compact the database.

webinars

RootsMagic 4 and 5 did not only introduce new features, but also improved on existing ones. An important feature that isn't a feature of the RootsMagic application itself, is that RootsMagic has been offering many free webinars on new and improved features of RootsMagic, and that all the archived webinars can be viewed and downloaded for free.

RootsMagic 6

The RootsMagic blog post announcing RootsMagic 6 mentions four new features; Online publishing, Live Timeline View, Find Everywhere, WebTags and the CountyCheck Explorer.
To that list we can add the one feature alluded to above, and an Apple app.

RootsMagic 6

overview

RootsMagic 6 looks and feel much like previous versions, sells for the same price. Like version 4 and 5, RootsMagic 6 is a freemium application, available as a free download. There are two editions of RootsMagic; RootsMagic Essentials and RootsMagic Standard Edition. When you download and install RootsMagic, you get RootsMagic Essential for free. You need a registration key to upgrade to RootsMagic Standard Edition.

installation

You need buy an upgrade to a get new registration for every major version, but you can upgrade from RootsMagic 5 at your leisure. You can install RootsMagic 6 alongside RootsMagic 5, and try RootsMagic 6 Essentials before buying a registration. You can even run both RootsMagic 5 and RootsMagic 6 at the same time. Just be sure to install them in separate directories; if you install them in their default directories, all should be fine.

compatibility

The RootsMagic 6 file format is slightly different from the RootsMagic 5 file format. When you first open an RootsMagic 5 database in RootsMagic 6, RootsMagic 6 will pop up an About to convert database messagebox. That dialog box warns you, in bright red letters, that If you continue, RootsMagic will convert this database to the current version. Once the database is converted, you will need to create a GEDCOM file if you want to move your data back to an earlier version of RootsMagic.. Conversion of RootsMagic 5 databases is pretty darned quick. When I choose the Continue with conversion button for my own database containing more than a quarter million individuals, RootsMagic 6 converted it in about five seconds.

CountyCheck Explorer

The mention of the CountyCheck Explorer as a new feature isn't a mistake. RootsMagic 5 introduced the CountyCheck feature, RootsMagic 6 expands on that feature with the the CountyCheck Explorer. When enabled through the Program Options dialog box, CountyCheck feature will check placenames as you enter them. The CountyCheck Explorer simply lets you explore the the CountyCheck database without having to enter a placename. If you're online, clicking the Online Info button will even bring up the interactive historical map from the Newberry County Library.
The CountyCheck has not been integrated in RootsMagic's Problem Search, but RootsMagic 5 and 6 can create a CountyCheck Report.

Live Timeline View

The Timeline View was introduced in RootsMagic 5. RootsMagic 6 improves on this with the Live Timeline View; it is no longer a static view, it is now possible to edit events and names directly from the Timeline View.

RootsMagic 6 Dual TimeLine View

dual editing

One new feature that isn't in the RootsMagic blog post, but was shown in the What's New in RootsMagic 6 webinar, and is worth mentioning, is dual editing; the ability to have two edit screens open at the same time.
Previous versions of RootsMagic already allowed you to open one database multiple times, but as soon as you click on an individual to edit that individual, the modal edit dialog box prevents you from opening another one.
In RootsMagic 6, the individual edit dialog box is still modal, but the Live Timeline View is not, and you can still open one database twice, so now you can have two editable views open, next to each other, at the same time.

Find Everywhere

The Find Everywhere feature is just what it names suggests; it will search all fields of all records of your database. It will find your search text not just in notes, but in names, events, places, sources, to-do items, research logs, media items, anything. It does not present the search results as a static list, but you click to view and perhaps edit each item it found, and then return to the result list.

Publish Online

Another new feature is Publish Online Earlier versions of RootsMagic already offered the ability to create HTML files, and that ability is still there, but the menu item changed, it is called Create HTML Files... now.
Publish Online is a new and different feature, which includes upload of your data to free web space on My.RootsMagic.com.

To upload data to My.RootsMagic.com, you first need to create an account. The Publish Online dialog box allows you to do so. When you choose to upload your data, RootsMagic will present a bunch of option dialogs, to set everything from the project name (directory name), Title and Introduction, and to decide what gets included. You can even include extra links. The links you add will be below Index and Pedigree Chart, and look just the same.

two-step

A nice property of RootsMagic's Publish Online is that it does not immediately create an online site, but uses a two-step process that allows you to make sure things are as you like them. When you choose generate site, RootsMagic generates the site on your hard disk, so you can preview the result. Only when you like that result, do you choose the big Publish this site to My.RootsMagic.com button.

An interesting side-effect of the two-step approach is that you can take that directory and upload it elsewhere. Thus, RootsMagic now offers two different ways to create web sites. One creates static sites, the other creates dynamic sites, and it makes sense to keep both options, but I would not be surprised to see the two separate user interfaces for those two options be merged into a single one.

RootsMagic 6 About to Convert Database

web views

The web browser shot looks a bit awkward because the My.RootsMagic.com pedigree chart does not fit within the viewport of a 1024 x 768 browser, but nowadays, most users have higher resolution screens. The more important thing is that the My.RootsMagic.com aren't static but dynamic; the views are not limited to pre-generated pages, but you can select any person in the database and then choose a pedigree, family or individual view. The My.RootsMagic sites can include notes, sources and media items. The individual view will include photo and captions if you set them, the pedigree view will include thumbnails. The pedigree view will also be colour coded if your RootsMagic database is colour-coded.

RootsMagic does not advertise your site the world, you need to distribute the URL for your site yourself, but the sites you create on My.RootsMagic today are public, and there are no options to password-protect your site. The URLs on My.RootsMagic are case-sensitive.
There is a size limit for My.RootsMagic.com; you get 15 MB in total. You are not very likely to reach that, unless you include lots of media.

tip: broken links

RootsMagic 6 doesn't include a broken link checker, but does include a WebTags report.
You can create that report, save it to HTML, and then use any regular web link checker.

WebTags

The new WebTags feature may sounds intimidating and technical, but it isn't technical at all, and quite easy to use. I do think this feature should have been called WebLinks instead, as what WebTags allows you to do is add web links to your genealogy records. You can add web links to individuals, sources, citations, places, and research log items. You can use this to link persons to online biographies, sources to online scans, etcetera.
Any link you add may be broken later, and dealing with broken links is no fun, so you should carefully consider whether some web page is worth linking to.

RootsMagic app for iOS

The recently released app for Apple devices is free on iTunes. It is s companion app to RootsMagic for the desktop, that does not require RootsMagic Standard Edition, but works just fine with RootsMagic Essentials. The RootsMagic app does not even require RootsMagic 6; it works fine with RootsMagic 4 and 5 too.
The RootsMagic 1.0 app isn't a genealogy editor, but a genealogy viewer; it simply allows you to carry all your data with you.
The RootsMagic app's best feature is that it works with native RootsMagic databases. There is no need import, export or convert, you merely need to copy your database via iTunes or Dropbox.
The RootsMagic App for iDevices article discusses this new app in a little more detail.

conclusion

The RootsMagic 6 release is nothing revolutionary, but an evolution from the previous release, as most major releases should be. There probably are too many small changes to discover or enumerate, but just a handful of major new features and improvements. That almost seems disappointing, but what's there is worthwhile, and does represent significant programming effort.
That one feature that got postponed, to be released after some improvements, promises to be a really great one. It may even be one of those features worth buying the product for, just like Legacy Family Tree's many data integrity checks are worth buying Legacy for.

The broader view is that the biggest improvement coming with RootsMagic 6 isn't any new or improved features in the RootsMagic product itself, however worthwhile these may be, but is the introduction of additional products, that significantly enhance the value of the core product.
The first of these is the recently released RootsMagic for iDevices, and RootsMagic for Android will be released in the near future. The RootsMagic To-Go feature is nice, but you can't use that everywhere. Having your data ready for look-up on your smartphone is better.
There's even a RootsMagic for Macintosh in the works.

The RootsMagic 6 may not immediately wow as much as some other product releases, but it is a solid product release worth getting, made more attractive by the release of a companion app.

updates

2013-07-17: RootsMagic Problem Alerts

The Problem Alerts feature introduced in RootsMagic 6.3.0.0 aims to provide the user experience innovation presented in Integrated Consistency Checking.
RootsMagic uses background processing to run your entire database through its existing consistency checks, so that any problem persons can be highlighted on screen to draw attention to any issues it found.
RootsMagic is currently the only genealogy editor that aims to provide the suggested user experience for your databases.