>From the USA, I found FMP to be very valuable in my search for Cheshire ancestors. Past tense! It is mostly useless now, can't find anything but the census'. But that doesn't bother me as much as the fact that FMP does not care that they have destroyed its usefulness. I have written them 3 times on the subject, and all inquiries have been ignored. I have a full-up worldwide Ancestry account, but they can't hold a candle to FMP, that is the old FMP. It makes me so sad. Beverly Culpeper, VA -----Original Message----- From: cheshire-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:cheshire-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Adrian Bruce Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2014 12:13 PM To: cheshire@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [CHS] FMP <<snipped>> I keep reading that it has got better but I have seen no difference. <<snipped>> Depends where you're looking. They have reintroduced the ability to download pages of newspapers, for instance. <<snipped>> None of the main family history sites seem to be working well at the moment, Ancestry and FamilySearch are having trouble too. Looks as though they are all busy updating their websites to fit in with the current fashion for doing everything from an iPad or tablet <<snipped>> Working on tablets and smartphones has to be a given. It's perfectly possible to do it - you just need to design layouts that respond differently to being on different sizes of glass. Re Ancestry - Yes, New Search anyone? And I suspect the impractical mechanism to choose birthplace in the FMP censuses had its inspiration in Ancestry restricting people to birthplaces in a drop-down list. And where did Ancestry get its inspiration from? The programmers? I suspect not - I think they got the idea from American *genealogists*. You don't have to go far before you find American genealogists going on about placename authority tables, i.e. a full and complete list of *all* placenames. (Honesty compels me to point out that when American genealogists refer to placenames they mean jurisdictions - and it might be possible to produce such a list for the UK - I think http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk has just that. But the Norwegian genealogists seem to be producing a database of all farm-names!!! Maybe "farm" means something different to them...) Adrian ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CHESHIRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message