We are enabling a new feature for our larger sites: Auto-Complete Direct Name entry.

On our smaller sites (less than 2,000 names), users can "jump around" using a drop-down list above the menu bar on their Tree pages (Family View, Ancestors, etc.). Here's a photo of the field on a small test site:

The problem is that as the number of names in a site grows, that drop-down list gets difficult to use, and then it starts to impact site performance (10,000 names in a drop-down list just doesn't work). For that reason, we've had to disable the drop-down for sites over 2,000 names.

However with a bit of Web 2.0 goodness, we've just developed a replacement for the large sites that looks to solve some very old problems. We now have an Auto-Complete text box that lets you type in the beginning of any name in your tree, and it will drop-down options that match what you type! Here's an example:

We've been looking for a solution to several of the problems with larger sites, and this really gets us started. You can enter text as "Lastname, Firstname", "Firstname Lastname" and several variants. We find it's very usable, and hope you do as well.

More to come?

We're aware that there are other places where this would be VERY useful. Perhaps the biggest is the addition of spouses/parents in the Edit screens for large sites. If this works well on the "Direct Access" job, we'll be re-using it for places like that as well. However, we thought that since "anything's better than nothing", this would be a good place to work out the bugs.

Please let us know of any issues you find on the Technical Forum [1] or through the Feedback Page [2].

-TribalPages

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