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ABOUT 'HIGHSPOT LINKS'
Copyright 2007-2013 by Ancestry Register LLC and Terry J. Booth
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All reproduction or reuse is prohibited, in whole or in part, without written permission of the author and Ancestry Register LLC.
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One of most people's frustations in reviewing traditional family histories, is having to look through an oftentimes overwhelming amount of information that is of little interest, in search of the 'highspots' that are. Traditional genealogies attempt to address this 'information overkill' problem with unobtrusive additions like '+' labels (indicating a child has an entry in the next generation), and (sometimes) the use of bolding to show earlier/later direct ancestors and descendants. But neither addition is visually striking, and many users remain unaware of these nuances.
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The introduction and growth of the internet has greatly expanded the ways in which documents can be searched, edited and linked. Recognizing these expanded powers, AncestryRegister.com has added the color and hyperlinks of the web to the black and white unlinked pages of traditional family histories to create a new more powerful and more focused approach. The most obvious addition is 'AR's' use of color, in which it uses a range of colors to suggest which information is most important. Its HIGHSPOT green color is therefore used to identify all ancestors and descendants of a history's subject(s), while the more numerous non-direct relations are simply colored blue. Color - not an option for traditional black and white printed pages - is far more visually striking than bolding, and quickly sends a message to even first-time users they can 'skip everything in blue' to get a quick understanding of who is important, who is related to the subject(s) of the history and who is not.
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In addition, a directory of 'notable relatives' is shown as one of the toolbars. The directory summarizes all persons in the history that have biographies, Wikipedia links or other internet weblinks. It has thereby become a truly 'highspot' listing of notable relatives one should pay attention to. And even here - as well as elsewhere - there is additional color highspots, with names in Red being 'Especially Notable' direct ancestors or descendants, and names in Maroon denoting 'Especially Notable' cousins or more distant relationships.
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The added power of the internet has been harnessed in other ways. Every index - not just that of notable relatives, but the separate index of every person in the family history, and the index of every family line genealogy as well - have all names receiving similar 'AR' Highspot color coding. So in searching for a directly linked relative, a user can skip over all those entries in blue. Icons have also been added to all family line genealogy pages, so that in paging down through many generations, entries with especially noteworthy associations (i.e. the original immigrant, a veteran of the revolutionary or civil war, etc.) will also visually leap out from the page.
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The use of HIGHSPOT LINKS is just one of the many innovations that AncestryRegister.com is hoping will make this an especially useful and friendly family history that everyone will want to share in.
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We appreciate your support of the AncestryRegister.com Website.
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