Welcome to our family history as documented by Margaret Levin. This is a work in progress, much has been done and much is to do. Information, stories, photographs etc. are welcome in order to flesh out the on-going story, please contribute if you can.

This site is currently being used to make available the information maintained by Margaret; changes are therefore not immediately shown on this site. Some aspects are evolving with time so changes to presentation and features might occur. Feedback about the site is welcome to help us assess its value and the presentation options. Use the Contact Us link on the Home page (below) or the drop-down menu Info top right of most pages.

Introduction and tips

Basic Information

Information is organised around Individuals.

Individuals have Ancestors and may have Descendants, Partners and Siblings. All of these are linked together. Associated with an individual can be: Pictures, Histories, Documents, Audio, Places, Notes etc.

Getting around

Navigating around the information might typically start by looking for an Individual you know and working out from there. The Home page allows searching by First or Last name. You only need one of them to quickly find who you are looking for. Usefully other pages have a Search button under the title 'Family History'.

Investigating an individual

Having found an individual, scroll down to see the information and media for them. To investigate their Ancestors/Descendants, click on the appropriate tab on the menu bar under their name.

There are many ways of visualising information about groups of people which varies depending on whether they are Ancestors or Descendants. The Fan chart is particularly good for Ancestors and the Vertical view gets a lot on the screen. You may need to scroll around or zoom in and out (press the CTRL button whilst rolling the mouse wheel) to see it all. Note, there is an option on the left of the menu bar to limit the number of generations shown, you may want to reduce to 3 or 4 to make it easier to work with or increase to 8 to see all generations (we only go back 8 generations).

Family tab

The Family tab shows immediate relations around an individual; parents, partners any siblings/children. This is particularly useful like a mini localised tree around that individual. Click on a Parent to show their record, go to their Family view and repeat navigates round the tree in small chunks. Note: A red '+' next to a name indicates more than one partner, click this to change the view accordingly. An issue with this view is that the other tabs such as for Descendants are not shown once in the Family view. This is a bug that may get resolved eventually, in the meantime all you need to do is press the back button on your browser as you would normally to return to the previous page.

Bookmarks

It is possible to bookmark any number of pages that are of interest to you making it easier to return to them later. Most pages have a Bookmark button on the right under the Info menu. To list and return to an existing Bookmark press Your Bookmarks close to the Logout button left of the top menu.

Tip (links)

The Fan Chart and most others, show related individuals with live links that can either be hovered over with the mouse to show summary information or clicked on to jump to that individual. Some diagrams have arrows ▼ under their boxes that can be hovered over with the mouse to show a pop-up window.

The What's New menu on the Home page or under Info on all other page shows resent changes have been made.

Menus to all information

At the bottom of the Home page is a comprehensive menu to all information held. The same information can be accessed from all other pages by using the top three menu items: Find, Media, and Info.

Top menu

At the very top of the screen are four links to significant people. You can use these to jump directly to these individuals.

Lastly

Try all the various menu options (you can't break it), you might find something that meets your particular needs; e.g.look at the Calendar and Places views as different ways to visualise the data. The Statistics view (under Info menu) shows just how much information Margaret has collected.