Family Historian 4 Officially Released Today

While Calico Pie actually made it available for purchase at the end of April, they officially annouced version 4 today. Some of the interface has been completely rewritten to make it easier to use. New features in version 4 include:

• A new hub component window called the Focus Window, with views for spouses & children, parents & siblings, ancestors and descendants has been added. It is designed to make adding relatives and moving around a family tree, completely intuitive and easy. The Focus Window can display up to 9 pictures of the ‘focus person’, as well as pictures of other family members. If a person has multiple spouses, all of their families with each spouse, are displayed together on one page.
• The main data entry window – the Property Box – has been reworked so that it too is now easier than ever to use. Users can configure its appearance, customize it (even add custom tabs to it), move it, resize it, or ‘dock’ it to the side of the application window. And you can choose any text size or font you want.
• Project management capability has been added. The program automatically looks after all your project files for you (including picture files and other multimedia, saved charts and more) in a dedicated folder on your hard disk.
• Multi-level undo/redo lets you make changes in confidence, knowing that if you make a mistake you can easily undo it (this is the most voted-for feature on users’ wish lists).
• A new How Related tool has been added, which shows up to 9 different ways that any two people are related. If they are not directly related to one another, it will try to show you how they are indirectly related to one another, via a 3rd party, if they are.
• Full support for same sex relationships has been added.
• Support for multimedia has been significantly enhanced – especially pictures. Thumbnail views have been added to make browsing pictures easy. You can now link pictures to events and attributes. Adding pictures and multimedia is easier than ever, as is browsing all the pictures in your project – thanks to extensive filtering options, including keyword filtering, in the Multimedia Window. Support for pictures has been improved in reports, and there is an all-new Multimedia Report.
• Charts, reports and queries can all now be saved in PDF format. With charts, you also have the option of saving the entire chart as a one-page PDF file.
• There is a new Export GEDCOM File capability, with numerous options, including the ability to export selected Individual records only (with various methods supported for selecting them, including by query), a choice of methods for handling the export of same sex relationship information, options to exclude records of all types, and the option to remove [[private]] notes (that is, notes flagged as private by encasing them in doubled square brackets).
• Support for website generation and family tree CDs has been improved with automatic support for web links, enhanced privacy options, enhanced text colouring options, and support for the new Multimedia report.
• Charts and diagrams have had numerous improvements, including new more flexible alignment options for boxes. Text can now be any colour (previously colours were restricted). There is a new move within row/column option to allow better use to be made of space. As previously mentioned, charts can be saved as PDF files, and even as one-page PDFs. There are new features for power users, and other enhancements.
• Support for Fact Queries has been added. You can now create a query to search, filter and report on, any and all events and/or attributes in your project, using whatever criteria you like.
• Extensive power-user features have been added, giving power-users much greater scope to extend and customize the program than ever before. Ordinary users can also benefit through the ability to download program extensions written by power users, from Family Historian user websites (e.g. www.fhug.org.uk).
• The product includes Getting the Most From Family Historian 4 as an online book. It has been extensively revised and updated since the version 3 edition.
• Family Historian 4 has been given a new more modern look, and numerous enhancements to make the program easier than ever to learn and even nicer and more fun to use.