For a long time, we have wanted to build up a Family Tree.
Doing so with paper and pencil would be far too laborious, especially as you need to redraw the tree again and again. So the obvious solution is a computer program, preferably free and preferably web-based.
However, all the of software out there on the Internet is either too expensive, too complex to use or too limited in scope. So the answer had to be "roll your own", which Mark has now done using Silverlight 4.
There is still some work to do to research the Lines-Davies Family Tree, but it now reaches back as far as 1600 on the Lines side and 1532 on the Davies side.
We have also started family trees for Mark's sisters' families, as well as separating out the Lines and Davies trees. The Newman family tree shows Alison's family, and the Lucas family tree shows Hilary's family.
The Lines family tree is centred around George and Barbara, Michèle's parents. The Davies tree is centred around Arthur and Jean, Mark's parents.
So that you can have a look at the Family Trees if you haven't got Silverlight, the smaller trees are also available as images.
|
Family Trees via Silverlight 4
may take a few seconds to load |
Family Trees as JPEG Images
images are compressed |
|---|---|
| Lines-Davies Family Tree | N/A, too large to compress |
| Lines Family Tree | Lines Family Tree |
| Davies Family Tree | Davies Family Tree |
| Newman Family Tree | Newman Family Tree |
| Lucas Family Tree | Lucas Family Tree |
When one of the Family Trees is first displayed, it is shown "zoomed out" so you can view the whole tree.
There is a slider bar in the left margin, which allows you to zoom in by dragging the slider up. You can zoom back out again by moving the bar down.
The Print button allows the Family Tree to be rendered to a printer. Silverlight 4 is limited in the size of printed pages it can accomodate: it does not support A3 pages or larger. To get round this limitation, the Print button also gives access to a screen where you can save the Family Tree as a bitmap. You can then use the Microsoft Office Picture Manager to makes various crops of the image in order to print it in several parts.
Finally, the Load button allows you to experiment with creating your own family tree by allowing you to open your own family tree XML file.
If you want to experiment with building up your own Family Tree, a good place to start is by downloading our Sample Family Tree XML file.
Then please read our Guide to the syntax of the family tree XML.
