JewishGen is pleased to announce many new features to its systems.
These features were announced and premiered at the
25th IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Las Vegas on July 12, 2005.
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Three new "All Country" Databases:
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New advanced search features for all of the "All Country" Databases:
- Ability to search by Given Name (first name), as well as
Surname (last name), Town Name, and full-text search —
You can now search for persons with a specific first name.
- Ability to filter searches by geographic regions and sub-regions —
for instance, by gubernia or district.
- Ability to specify search-type criteria for each field, as either:
"Is Exactly", "Sounds Like", "Starts With" or "Contains".
- Ability to combine multiple search criteria, using Boolean AND/OR searches —
This allows more focused, targeted searches. For example,
you can search for all persons whose surname Sounds-Like "Katz"
AND first name Starts-With "Abr".
Or you can search for family groups comtaining a particular set
of given names, within a particular town.
- Ability to filter searches by date of dataset update —
If you've already searched a database, you can now search only for
data recently added/updated, since a certain date.
- Specialized searches — For example, in the
JOWBR Cemetery Database,
you can search by Father's Given Name, by Spouse's Given Name, etc.
This allows you to find tombstones which don't contain a surname.
Note that the latter three of these
advanced search features
will be available only to donors who make a $100 annual contribution to the
JewishGen
General Fund.
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More data sharing and integration in the "All Country" Databases:
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New User Interface features:
- Menu Bar — A MenuBar header at the top of every page on
on the JewishGen website, to help navigate and move around
the site more easily.
- The MenuBar contains eight buttons, one for each of the major
areas of JewishGen: Learn, Databases, Discussion, Projects,
Contribute, SIGs, Hosted Organizations, and JewishGen-eral
Information.
- When you pass your mouse over any button, a contextual sub-menu
of other buttons appears, listing the various web pages in that area
that you can go to. There are over 50 buttons in all.
- As you pass your mouse over any button or sub-button in the
MenuBar, a description of each item appears, at the bottom of
the screen, in your browser’s status bar.
- The menu bar and its buttons are organized as a "Site Map",
revealing the structure of the JewishGen website.
- Bread crumb navigation trail —
which tells you where you are within the website.
- Located at the bottom of the header, the Navigation Trail is
a hierachical view of your current location within the website.
You can click on any previous item in the hierarchy, to go back to
that page.
- Highlighted form input fields; auto-focus —
- When you arrive at a JewishGen database search form,
the cursor is now automatically positioned on the first input field.
The input field currently in focus is highlighted with a
light background color.
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New and Improved ShtetlSeeker:
- Expanded scope - from 24 countries to 31 countries.
- Updated data for many countries.
- Accented characters displayed for all languages.
- All synonyms for a town now shown together.
- Choice of mapping software: MapQuest, Expedia, and MultiMap.
- Radius Search - Better Integration.
For complete details, please see the
Release Notes.
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JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) enhancements:
- All contacts now blind copy, to protect users.
- JGFF town name clean-up and consolidation.
- Switchover to new modern placenames (Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova)
to conform to new ShtetlSeeker and revised Where Once We Walked.
- Town Synonym search.
- Separate search types for Surname and Town.
For complete details, please see the
Release Notes.
