December uptdate to New FamilySearch

The last changes to New.FamilySearch.org were back in August of 2010. Now, in December, we have a few more changes to the popular online database. (Popular with those who have access). The changes seem relatively minor, considering the slew of issues hanging out there to be considered. To quote from the What's New announcement:

Receive E-mail Notifications for Changes
You can now “watch” individuals in your family tree and receive an e-mail notification when information
about them changes.
For now, the notification identifies the following types of changes:
• Someone changes the individual’s summary.
• Someone starts a new discussion or adds a comment to an existing discussion.
• Someone combines an individual that you are watching with another record.
• Someone separates a record from an individual that you are watching.
The notification e-mail will eventually list more types of changes.

 Some of the additional changes have to do with reserving and selecting LDS ordinances. When you reserve the ordinances for a family, you can now deselect any family member whose ordinances
you do not want to do. Also, If you try to reserve ordinances for someone who was born in the last 95 years, the system now asks whether you are the closest living relative or have permission from the closest living relative to do the ordinances.
 The closest living relatives are, in this order:
• An undivorced spouse. (The spouse to whom the individual was married when he or she died.)
• An adult child.
• A parent.
• A brother or sister.

The injunction concerning contacting the closest living relative has always been the rule. This is apparently a re-emphasis of the issue. From personal experience I know this rule is very often violated by people anxious to do the ordinances.

The size limit for discussions has increased from 1000 to 4000 characters.

In an additional change, support for Internet Explorer 6 has been discontinued. The recommended Browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 3.0 and newer and Safari 3.12A.

Maybe after the first of the year we will see some changes that make a difference in the huge overburden of problems with the program.