Blog Archive

21 December 2010

Ancestry Family Search Chrome Extension

Over the last few months, I’ve been getting into writing Chrome extensions for the team at work to help automate some of the tasks that we regularly need to perform in the browser. I was amazed how easy it was to write Chrome extensions and I’d encourage anyone with HTML and Javascript knowledge to read the Google Chrome Extensions documentation and give it a go too.

Until a few weeks ago, I’d still not written any publicly available extensions, but then I saw this tweet from EricaJoy:

Half asleep thought, must write down before passing out. Chrome extension for searching familysearch.org for Ancestry.com relatives. SLEEEP.

That sounded like a pretty good idea to me and something that would be easy to write too. A quick search of the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery suggested nothing like it already existed either. After a few hours of coding, I gave Erica a copy of the extension to install and test. Feedback was good, so I uploaded it to the gallery for other genealogy enthusiasts to enjoy:

I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s already got 156 users, 93 weekly installs and an average of 4 stars from 8 ratings. If you install the extension and discover a bug or have an idea for a feature request, you can send me your comments using the feedback form.

Note: I had a couple of issues with the extension when FamilySearch.org moved their search from beta.familysearch.org to www.familysearch.org which meant I needed to update the permissions but those should be fixed now. I’m also aware that the search criteria is no longer displayed on the results page but I hope to fix that in the next version.

Labels: , , ,