11 August 2025

Collapsing Headers on Ancestry Profiles?

Snippet Of Person Profile
Full Header
 Ancestry appears to have made a change when I scroll on a person profile. The first image is how it's looked for a long time, and how it still looks when I initially open a profile. I call this the "Full Header". Note: I'm a big fan of adding tags, as you can tell. I also choose to show research tools. Depending on how you work, you may or may not have these showing. 

Snippet Of Person Profile Collapsed
Collapsed Header

Today, when I log in and scroll on any page of a person's profile (oddly, with the notable exception of gallery), my screen jumps and shrinks the header to about 1/3 the size. as shown in the image labelled "Collapsed Header". The actual birth and death dates, as well as the locations and all tagging disappear to show birth/death years only and relationship.

In theory, I don't mind minimizing the photo, but I really detest it removes critical details we may need to refer to as we're adding new facts. And the screen jumping around between a full header and a collapsed header while scrolling up and down is extremely visually distracting. I don't know about you, but since I add a lot of facts, I'm constantly scrolling....so my screen is constantly jumping.

In a perfect world, I'd love to see an option to dock the header. Given a choice, I wouldn't collapse it. But, there may be reasons, such as the user experience on a tablet, where it may make sense to maximize use of visible area....but I'd still find the jumping back and forth very annoying no matter the size of the screen.

I really hope this is a beta feature. And I hope it's only temporary. Have you seen this change on your account? If so, how do feel about it?

1 comment:

  1. When I scroll on Ancestry the header is not frozen/stationary. The whole page scrolls down.

    ReplyDelete

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