Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Changes to "masslandrecords.com"

If you click on the yellow "search" box on www.lowelldeeds.com, a search window from the Middlesex North section of www.masslandrecords.com immediately opens.  At the top of that new page, you now see the following:

Try the New Masslandrecords.com*. This new search will become the default application on October 1, 2011.
The platform for Classic MassLandRecords.com will continue to be available until January 1, 2012, at which time it will no longer be supported.

The "New" masslandrecords made its premature debut about two years ago.  When it was first rolled out it had a number of problems, the most serious of which was unacceptably slow performance.  Those problems have all been fixed, however, and the "new" system has been available to all who opt to use it for nearly a year.  During that time, we here at the registry of used it extensively and find it to the "old" version in almost every respect.

As the above notice makes clear, the "new" version will be the default search program beginning October 1 and will be the only search program as of January 1, 2013.  I urge you to make the switch now and begin using the new version of the site.  There undoubtedly will be a learning curve, but there's no turning back so you might as well get started now.

In the coming days, I'll be writing more about the various functions of the new site and will provide what hopefully will be some helpful hints about its use.

2 comments:

Bob Moriarty said...

Register Howe,

As a daily frequent user of the Mass Land Records I strongly disagree with you about the new system vs the old system. The new system significantly slower not only in response time, but also in the time required to do the same tasks because of the number of steps that are required with the new system. What is easily done on the old system with a couple of clicks takes 5 or 6 clicks, resizing, waiting, more clicks and more waiting.

I will read with great interest the advantages that you believe exist, but I doubt that you will find any regular users who have switched to the new system. Those of us who need to use the system tom earn a living dread the disappearance of the old system and will use the old system till the day it is no longer available.

Jeff Welch said...

I've used the new version of ACS 20/20 for a couple of years, since it was introduced in Fall River and then Plymouth. It is more functional than the "old" version. It allows for sorting, which the old system does not. It doesn't require the user to click on each search result. On the old system, if I run a name, it segregates every variation of the name into a separate link. In the new system, if I run a name, all the results are shown, without the extra steps of clicking the link, and then navigating back to the search results.

The image sizing is not a problem if your browser is set to allow the pop-up viewer, rather than using the small window on the right.

The new system is faster than the old system, once you figure out how to use it.