Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

Hop over to The Fun Theory and watch the three videos there. It’s a very interesting concept that makes eminent sense.

This is actually an initiative of Volkswagen. They’ve been very innovative in their advertising on TV lately (great commercials!) and this initiative may be an attempt for them to raise their profile on the Internet and get the younger generation interested in their cars again.

None-the-less, the idea is that people will do things more willingly if you make it fun for them to do it.

Entering your genealogy data into a genealogy program is usually NOT a fun thing to do. It is more often something you are compelled to do only because you, as a genealogist, want that data recorded. And despite the drudgery, you continue on to do it.

Maybe it should be like a pinball game, with the bings and the bongs and a score continuously updating as you add more people and events and dates and sources into the deep dark cavern of your genealogy tool … or maybe not.

But if nothing else, genealogy software should attempt to make your data entry less onerous, less un-fun, and less of a thing that you feel you have to do in spite of the program’s attempts to make it very difficult.

I know I’ve got boxes of data waiting to be entered. I cringe at the thought of entering it all into a forms-based entry system. I couldn’t think of a less desireable thing to do with several hundred (if not thousand) hours of my time. That is very un-fun.

What I want is a program that could allow me to enter my data very efficiently, attach my sources easily, and see the data in context as I enter it to allow me to easily come up with those revelations that make this hobby so enjoyable.

Will that be fun? Maybe?

Behold

I really wanted Behold to be able to get certified for the Windows Logo. I tried when Vista came around. But Microsoft frustrated me in my attempt.

I’ve been thinking about trying again for Windows 7. But I encountered a very eye-opening post about it at Successful Software, a blog by Andy Brice that I follow.

Andy writes why he won’t be bothering with the Windows 7 logo program. He did get certified for Windows Vista, but said when I asked, that he did not feel it was of any benefit at all. The bottom line is I found out that I wasn’t the only one finding that process difficult.

Scott K. says it well in the comments to the post: “I really can’t imagine any customer caring if you have some “Compatible with Windows 7″ logo. If you tell them it works (without the logo) I think they’ll believe you.”

What I will do is ensure Behold works and works well under all of XP, Vista and 7. And it will be code-signed guaranteeing you authenticity. I think those are what’s most important.

But until Microsoft makes the obstacle course a little less unattainable, then it’s not worth the setback in development time to get one more certification.

—

An aside: If you haven’t seen it, check out the Revenge of the GEDCOM monster merchandise for Halloween. Very cute.

Finished reimplementing Instant Organize. There were two tricky parts.

First, when you right-click, the cursor needs to detect where you are in the document. This used to be done by what were called Checkpoints in RichView. I had previously set Checkpoints up throughout the document. But now the entire document is not loaded at once, and I needed to keep track of locations in the program but outside of RichView. So it was a matter of hooking up to these new locations, rather than Checkpoints.

Second was the Instant Organize history that is saved. This used to save the IDs and names of the individuals for each of the last 10 IO’s that was performed. The new locations were now both individuals and families, so changes were required here.

Instant Organize is one of the very unique functions of Behold. I don’t know of any other genealogy programs that can allow you in one click to quickly create all the family tree and all information about and ONLY about an individual or a couple.

This only took a few days to do. Next number two.