Last week, I wrote about Ancestry.com’s new online Historical
Newspapers. In that article, I mentioned that I had a bit of difficulty locating
information on the newspaper page after finding it in the index. I had to pan
around the page quite a bit.
This week, Ancestry.com announced an update to their viewer program
that now makes it much easier to find the text on the newspaper page. New functionality
has also been added to both the Ancestry Image Viewer and to the Basic Image
Viewer.
The following information is from Ancestry.com:
Ancestry.com has now upgraded both image viewers that are
currently being used for the Historical Newspapers, as well as many of the
recent city directories and other databases that have previously used the
Ancestry Viewers. The upgrade brings with it a number of significant enhancements
that make these images much easier to use.
Of particular note, is the thumbnail navigational tool that
has been added to both the Ancestry Image Viewer 2.0 and the Basic Image
Viewer (recommended for Netscape and Macintosh users). The thumbnail shows
the entire layout of the page with the portion that is in the viewer highlighted
in yellow. By clicking on any area in the thumbnail, the user can navigate
quickly to that portion of the page in the display window.
Improvements to page-to-page navigation have also been made
on both viewers, and image files are now at a higher resolution for better
readability.
The Ancestry Image Viewer 2.0 is recommended as the best choice
for users with Microsoft Windows 98 or higher and Internet Explorer 4.01
or higher. It requires an easy download, which typically takes about 10
minutes on a 56K modem.
The new version of the Ancestry Image Viewer 2.0 includes
most of the same great features found in the first versions, such as a floating
magnifier, highlighted hits, and the ability to jump forward and backward
between hits, real time zooming and scrolling, high quality printing and
saving, and image enhancement features.
New features include better quality images for easier readability
and printing, as well as precision magnification, which allows users to
select a portion of the image and automatically fit that selected section
to the screen. Image enhancement tools are available by right-clicking on
the image.
Ancestry.com Census subscribers can look forward to the 1930
U.S. Federal Census to be converted to this format in the near future as
well.
Subscribe to the Historical Newspapers at: www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?sourceid=2116&targetid=3505
Subscribe to the U.S. and Canada Records Collection: www.ancestry.com/rd/signup.htm
Dick Eastman Online
