TNG V12 Major Changes

This article is a complete list of the changes introduced by TNGv10, grouped by category rather than ordered numerically. It starts with a list of changes that are also listed under the categories.

Darrin's Feature Preview

• DNA: Jeff Robison’s DNA mod has been incorporated, providing several significant enhancements to the previous method of tracking DNA tests.
• Mod Manager: Rick Bisbee, Ken Roy and others have added significant improvements to this utility that allows users to easily install or remove code modifications and add-ons.
• Translations: TNG has now been translated into Chinese, as well as 20 other languages. Google Translate tools have also been added to the online help pages and the installation guide to allow users to view those resources in their own language.
• New Designs: Three new templates have been added, and improvements have been made to several others. The template settings have also been moved to a more robust location, within the database.
• Media Enhancements: Many improvements have been made in the way TNG handles photos and other media. These include importing media linked to citations, creating thumbnails from some PDFs, being able to show thumbnails in a single horizontal row if desired, and showing captions on top of image previews.
• Libraries Upgraded: Third party libraries for jQuery, jQueryUI and PHP Mailer have been upgraded to the latest versions. The C3 and D3 charting libraries have also been added.
• New Visualizations: A First Names page (like the existing Surnames page) provides a different way to look at your data, and the new C3/D3 charting libraries allow for pie chart representations on those pages and on the Statistics page.
• Security: The reCaptcha mod has been incorporated, giving TNG site owners a way to fight spam from bots. A few other security updates will prevent authorized access in previously vulnerable areas.
• User Access: Registered site users can now be assigned to multiple trees. Admins and editors will still see only one tree at a time, but they can easily switch from one tree to another without logging in multiple times.
• New Tools: A “Refresh Living” utility will re-mark people as living or deceased, depending on dates entered or time elapsed from birth, while a “Make Private” tool will mark people as private if they have been deceased less than the configured number of years.
• Compatibility: Pro-active changes will make sure TNG remains compatible with the latest versions of PHP and MySQL.

Extracted from TNG 12 Feature Preview

Chart Enhancements

8. Fan Chart: The chart was misaligned and the wrong popup messages were being displayed when the chart was resized to 100% of the available width. Chart will now only be resized if 5 or more generations are being shown.

39. Pedigree: The boxes on the Standard chart have been made larger.

40. Pedigree: The mobile ancestor charts will all default to 3 generations.

41. Pedigree/Descendancy: The font size of these pages has been made larger.

42. Pedigree/Descendancy: Birth and death years are now shown on the standard charts.

DNA Tests Enhancements

5. DNA: Jeff Robison's DNA mod has been incorporated. This provides several significant enhancements to the previous method of tracking DNA tests:

• better privacy controls
• Y-DNA results tracking
• Y-DNA results comparison
• mtDNA results tracking

File Picker

9. File Picker: The list of files can now be sorted by the file date.

10. File Picker: The width of the dialog has been increased by 100 pixels to help with the display of longer file names.

First Name Lists

11. First Names: New pages contributed by Adrian Oates show first names along the same lines as the current Surnames pages.

Import

13. Import: The GEDCOM import will now restart immediately after the file upload and again if nothing happens in 10 seconds. This should prevent most import stalls.

14. Import: The GEDCOM import will now recognize more "_FLGS" custom events as generated by Brother's Keeper.

15. Import: If media records include a DATE or _DATE tag, the information following will be placed in the media date field.

Language Translation

12. Help: The online help is now translatable (using Google Translate).

16. Installation: The installation guide has been simplified. It is also now translatable (using Google Translate).

17. Languages: Support added for Chinese UTF-8, removed for Polish ISO-8859-2.

Media Enhancements

18. Media: When a tree is selected in the Media Info section, that selection will carry over to the Media Links section and other parts of the Add/Edit Media page.

19. Media: TNG can now create thumbnails from some PDF files (only from the Add/Edit Media screens).

20. Media: Media may now be linked to citations, and citation media links can be imported from a GEDCOM file (warning: these links cannot be perpetuated beyond a subsequent GEDCOM import).

21. Media: Settings now govern what happens to the physical file when a media record is deleted. You can choose to delete the physical file always, never or on confirmation.

22. Media: Fixed bug that made the image preview disappear when mousing over the bottom shadow of a thumbnail.

23. Media: The thumbnails on person and family pages may now be displayed on a single row (if more than one exists). Configurable from the General Settings.

24. Media: Image previews now show the title/caption on top of the preview, near the bottom.

25. Media: The error report on the Generate Thumbnails page is more readable, with numbering and a better description for each issue.

26. Media: A permissions problem with default photo thumbnails on PDF reports has been fixed (the images were showing when they should have been withheld).

27. Media: The "checklogin" function can now be suppressed from "historytemplate" pages by setting $nologin = 1 before the "tng_begin.php" library is included.

28. The media search will now also search the "Owner" field.

29. Media/Trees: Media linked to a tree can now be stored in a separate folder for that tree (within the corresponding media folder).

Miscellaneous

30. Miscellaneous: A "Maintained by" message showing the site owner will now be displayed in the standard footer (across all templates).

31. Miscellaneous: TNG will be able to detect if it is online. If not, online libraries like jQuery will use local versions, and online services like Google Maps and the share icons will be disabled.

32. Miscellaneous: The PHP Mailer library has been upgraded to version 5.2.22.

33. Miscellaneous: The jQuery and jQueryUI libraries have been upgraded to versions 3.3.1 and 1.12.1 respectively.

34. Miscellaneous: A dozen or more other very small bugs were fixed (not significant enough to mention them individually).

Mod Manager Enhancements

35. Mod Manager: Rick Bisbee , Ken Roy, and others have added significant improvements to this utility:

* new options

* new tags

* conditional processing tags

* new flags

* new tabs

* tighter syntax

A TNG Wiki article on TNGv12 Mod Manager Enhancements explains these changes in detail.

Also, a new Notepad++ Mod Manager Language definition file that handles the new Mod Manager tags is available through the Notepad++ Mod Manager Language Wiki article.

36. Mods: Changes have been made to the commented message in cust_text.php files that is intended to be used by mods that add language strings.

Starting with TNGv12, when making changes to cust_text.php files, mods should use

1. the new search string
   //Mods should put their changes before this line, local changes should come after it.
2. and the directive %insert:before%

to add language strings above the search string.

The intent of this change is to reserve the space below the search string and above the closing "?>" for language strings that are inserted manually by TNG administrators. See TNG V12 Change Impacts to learn how to add the new search string to cust_text.php files.

Pie Charts

62. Surnames: The Surnames and First Names pages will now show the top 50 names in two columns, along with pie charts to show the top 10 breakdown.

63. Statistics: Added pie charts to the stats page to show gender, living status and media breakdowns. Charts use C3 and D3 charting libraries.

73. Trees: A pie chart will be shown if more than one tree exists (to show the breakdown among people in the various trees).

People/Families

43. People: The Admin/People/Merge page no longer requires the person prefix as part of the ID(s).
44. People: The Find Person dialog now shows First Name first and then Last Name to be consistent with other pages.
45. People: Death dates (in addition to birth dates) will be shown for all children, spouses and parents on the Edit Person/Edit Family pages.
46. People/Families: The last tree used will be preselected when creating the next new person or family.
47. People/Families: The width on the label (left) column will be decreased when the page is viewed on mobile.

Places Delete Capability

48. Places: The "places subject to deletion" mod has been incorporated.

reCaptcha V2 provided

55. Security: The nocaptcha reCaptcha mod has been incorporated into the standard code.

Search Enhancements

50. Search: Criteria entered in the First Name field will now search nicknames as well as first names.

51. Search: The Advanced Search page now lets you limit searches to a particular branch.

52. Search: Branch names will be displayed with the tree name in search results (where applicable).

Secondary Processes

53. Secondary Processes: New "Refresh Living" utility will re-mark people as living or deceased, depending on dates entered or time elapsed from birth.

54. Secondary Processes: New "Make Private" utility will mark people as private if they have been deceased less than a configurable number of years.

Template Enhancements

65. Templates: Three new templates have been added (16, 17 and 18).

66. Templates: Template lists and dropdowns have been reversed so that the newer templates are listed first.

67. Templates: A new table has been added to store template settings (they will no longer be kept in the templateconfig.php file).

This should make it harder for bad code and other "accidents" to destroy the current settings.

68. Templates: Extra top-row links have been added to templates 11, 13, 14 and 15. These links do not show if no label exists.

69. Templates: Templates 1, 2 and 3 now have intro (or "welcome") paragraphs.

70. Templates: The links at the bottoms of the home pages for templates 11, 13 and 14 now flow evenly across all columns.

71. Templates: Template 15 now has a search form in the top right.

User Enhancements

74. Users/Trees: Users can now be assigned to multiple trees (although only one assignment is active at any one time). Users assigned to multiple trees will be able to change their active tree at any time. When they log in, they will first see the tree they were using most recently.

72. Users: It was not obvious that a user's ability to edit their profile also controlled the user's ability to request a password change. Text on the Admin/Users pages has now been changed to reflect this.

Other Changes

1. Admin Menu: A message about map instructions and obtaining a map key has been included in the "important to dos" list.
2. Branches: The branch fields for people and families have been increased from 100 to 512 characters.
3. Calendar: The year of each event will now also be shown.
4. CSS: The body tag on each page now includes an ID ("bodytop") and a class corresponding to the page name.
6. Events: When the New/Edit Event popup appears, the focus will automatically be put on the first field.
7. Events: Custom Event Types can now be flagged as LDS (meaning that the events will not show if the user does not have rights to see LDS data).
37. PDF: Fixed errors on PDF reports with PHP versions 7 and higher.
38. PDF: UTF-8 characters will now display properly on PDF reports.
49. Relationship: The formatting of the birth and death years has been corrected.
55. Security: A security hole on the reset password page has been patched. A few other minor security issues were also patched.
56. Settings: A custom footer message can now be entered in the General Settings, under Site Design & Definition (appears on all templates).
58. Settings: The warning about backups can now be suppressed by changing the number of backup days to zero.
59. Suggest/GEDCOM: Fixed the forms on these pages so the columns aren't too wide.
60. Surname Cloud: The Surname Cloud will now be restricted to a user's assigned tree (if applicable).
61. Surname Cloud: Jeff Robison's tooltip mod has been incorporated (shows counts when hovering your mouse pointer over the name links).
64. Statistics: Children who died before age 3 will not be included in the "Average Age" statistic (to change that value, set $CUTOFF_YEARS in customconfig.php).
75. What's New: Branch names will be shown in the People and Families sections (where applicable).