Example idea: Consider an example of a filled tree to show off. For instance, <i>Game of Thrones</i><p>Pivot idea: Consider using the chart tool to map out relations of characters in stories, TV shows, legal cases, etc.<p>Service integration (client): Consider if your tree could fit in as a GSuite add-on: <a href="https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/</a><p>Service integration (host): create REST API's, or language libraries for people to use your tool programatically<p>Viral idea: Consider offering family trees for free so Wikia pages can link to them<p>Viral idea: Consider an embeddable app with zooming/panning that media websites and pay a monthly fee to integrate<p>Viral idea: Consider an import/export JSON schema users can use to share their graphs
I love family trees: they're interesting, complex, data-driven, and beautiful. There are some very challenging decisions you need to make to make a tree readable, like whose ancestors to show, whose children, and how far back. To give you a sense, I have ~3,500 people in my family tree. I want different trees to show, say: a) all descendants of a root ancestor, or b) all of my ancestors.<p>This is reasonably easy to use and build out a simple tree. Here are two opportunities:<p>1) There are some UI areas that aren't totally intuitive (e.g., double click to add name), and generally it feels to "clicky" (e.g., too many clicks to get to the action I want). I think your goal is super-simple and "delightful" vs. full-featured.<p>2) The 1:1 relationship lines get complex, as <i>every</i> parent is linked to <i>every</i> child (so you end up with 2n lines that all overlap).
Rather than clicking the plus to add a person, I think a more intuitive action would be to double-click empty space. Whether or not you change that, the 'click + to add a person' doesn't work - when you put the word 'click' on a page, people will click that and not pay attention to the rest of the directions. Even if they did, it's a little confusing because 'click + to add a person' isn't clear. You need to be more specific. 'click the plus button to add a person' and then have the plus button move so people see it.
When you launch the person dialog, focus on the Name input, then when they click enter, save and close the dialog. You are also missing out on a number of fields when creating a family tree (gender and maiden name come to mind fight off the bat).
Hey, sounds cool, let me just upload my GED^ file...<p>Ups, no upload feature (yet) - That would make it much more usable.<p>(^) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM</a>
Good effort. I tried making something similar years ago, and it was hard (the visual side, not the data side).<p>I don't know what your goals are with this though. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but to 'genealogy enthusiasts', ie the people regularly spending money in this domain, your website is no more than a toy. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Ancestry.com offers this same tree building functionality for free (when you pay for a subscription with them, it is for the research capability, not the data entry capability).
I've searched my entire life for a way to write simple family trees with custom data, fast, with or without a lot of information.<p>Then I've come up with this: <a href="https://github.com/fiatjaf/rel" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fiatjaf/rel</a>, which is a simple way to create triples, then render dot graphs, or any template actually, with them. The database is actually a bunch of YAML files representing each node in the graph (the relationships are stored in the nodes' files also).
$4.99 a month seems a bit steep for what looks like a very basic UI with no features like multi-user editing or photos or anything other than a node-link builder.<p>It's still a nice UI for the primary task.
I'll admit that I spent a little too much time on this trying to create the most interconnected tree I could imagine, just to see how many "my descendent is also my ancestor" connections are possible. The flexibility of this is pretty impressive.
Beautiful job.<p>There might be some people posting "why didn't you just..." but I used this to show my kids their family tree and they really liked it.<p>Freeloaded though, so you need a way to compell people to pay (say extra large posters of the tree).
Post to r/genealogy as there are requests
from time to time for tree makers.<p>Fyi. The church of latter day saints (Mormons) have familysearch.org
which has circles to show generations. The church has for decades housed and built the largest library for finding relatives. I believe this is because once you enter the church you can "save" all your deceased relatives going back as far as you can.<p>The tree is really not important to genealogy nuts....
I really like the overall approach - definitely a nice friendly way to edit a tree.<p>The standard way for family trees to link children with parents is through the relationship of the parents. Did you avoid doing that on purpose?<p>The problem with having a separate parent/child link for every parent/child relationship is that it gets very crowded if the parents have several children.
Coincidentally, I was talking to my father about getting his family tree work 'stored' in some digital format for future generations.<p>It struck me that a simple directory structure with info about each person in each directory, text files with info in, and then tar'd up would be about the most future-proof format you could get.<p>Anyone else thought about this?
Nice! BTW I've never found a really nice, easy way to draw up organizational hierarchy charts (I've always used Dia or similar, and that's fussy), and I guess it's the same thing more or less?
Nice work. Which library did you used for rendering connectors? I don't know how would you monetize it if you plan to. Also are you planning to open-source the code base?
Cute graphics ! Some feedbacks :<p>- Please make sure forms can be validated with enter, an not just by clicking a button (use for onSubmit)<p>- allways auto-focus most important input of form (like a person's name) when opening it (at least when it's empty)<p>-after adding a person, open the form immediately<p>- when tree is empty, put the + button in the center of the screen, big, and with explaination. THen, make a transition to put it back to it's normal place. This way it makes it obvious and then falls back to standard material design location. Other option is to make an empty state image with a big, obvious arrow to the button.<p>- maybe add transitions that help user follow the change of state when adding someone to the tree.<p>Great work overall, i wish you the best for your project.