I’m pleased to present some recent DNA Painter updates. I hope these small tweaks enhance your experience on the site.
Chromosome mapping
Clearer search results
The image below shows an improved interface for search results. Previously, when you searched for a match, all other segments would become very pale, with just the matching segments showing. This made it hard to compare the match with others.
Following feedback from a user in the DNA Painter User Group on Facebook, this is now updated so that the matching segments are identified with a dark shadow around them. The other segments are now visible. As previously, you can use the escape key or click ‘clear’ by the search field in order return the map to its default state.
Highlight match
Sometimes you might want to highlight a match without searching for them. Right now, you can click ‘View match’ to see the match overlay, where you can view overlapping segments. This new ‘Highlight match’ button will highlight all segments for that match just as if you’d searched for it.
Segment ‘track’
Segment tracks are another feature based on excellent user feedback (thank you!). Now, when a match is highlighted, either via a search or via the ‘Highlight match’ button, the segment appears on a darkened ‘track’ that spans the entire height of the chromosome.
If you have painted segments on the corresponding ‘unknown or both’ chromosome, then the track will appear here as well. This allows you to see more easily which other segments overlap with the highlighted match.
Chromosome number in view remains on-screen
If you have lots of matches painted, the expanded chromosome view can become very tall. The site now pins the number to the top left so that you’ll always know which chromosome you’re looking at.
Geneanet matches
A big piece of news in February was the extremely welcome addition of a chromosome browser at French genealogy site Geneanet. I released a DNA Painter update soon afterwards to enable painting these matches. I’ve added instructions to the help page. You do have to click on the file, download the contents and copy and paste them into the form. I would love it if Geneanet made an on-page table of segments in future, but in the meantime I’m just glad the data is available!
Duplicate chromosome map but keep just the groups
Another user request was to be able to duplicate just the groups from a chromosome map. This allows you to keep the same set of colours and ancestors but paint the matches of a different family member. This feature is now available as an option when you choose ‘Duplicate tree’ from the settings area above chromosome 1.
Trees
Pedigree collapse alerts
One of the nice features of ancestral trees is the ability to extract and visualize pedigree collapse information from a GEDCOM (family tree) file. When you hover over a node in the fan chart, you see a trail showing the path from this ancestor to you. To make this clearer in cases where you’re related more than once, I’ve added a label to the top of the trail.
If you haven’t used the trees feature before, this blog post explains some of their features.
Thanks
That’s it for this month. I hope these adjustments are helpful, and I look forward to your feedback.
Contact info: @dnapainter / jonny@dnapainter.com