Read Dick Eastman's review of GenDesigner 3.0 Public Beta 1 on Ancestry.com

August 21, 2003: A new version of the time-limited Public Beta 1 of GenDesigner™ 3.0 for Windows was released (3.01.05i).  It will install a new 180-day free license for all users of previous versions of GenDesigner 3.  Please go to the Announcement page for more information and to download GenDesigner (the link to download the program is on the Announcement page).

Features in this Public Beta 1 release include (see screenshots):

• easy, visual, and intuitive family tree building interface

• expanded database and GEDCOM Standard Release 5.5 compatibility

• improved navigation and customization

• full implementation of the Unicode standard to prepare GenDesigner for multilingual applications

• GenDesigner's user interface is currently available in 16 languages: Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

GenDesigner 3.0 was tested for compatibility with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP.  If you would require the full implementation of the multilingual features by entering text in more than one character set, e.g., Western European and Cyrillic (or any other combination), we recommend that you install Windows 2000 or Windows XP on your computer.  Earlier versions of Windows do not fully support the Unicode standard.  Read more about National Language Support (NLS) in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

All current users of GenDesigner version 2.x will be eligible for a discount on the purchase of the final release of version 3.x.

Public Beta 2 pre-release may be downloaded as well.  It includes a choice of the Simple or Advanced user interface.  These options may be changed at any time without compromising the database in any way.  Currently, Beta 2 has the English interface only.

• Those just starting as genealogists may start with the simple, visual, and uncluttered interface for entering basic information about their ancestors.

• Advanced genealogist may select options that will expand the interface to the database providing easy entry of even the most detailed information relevant to their ancestors.  Linking documents (text and multimedia), other databases and information available on the Internet is possible in this new release.

If you would like to become a beta tester and help with the development of localized (language-specific) version of GenDesigner 3.0, please contact us.  Current list of localized announcements: Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Latin America), Swedish.

The GenDesigner™ program version 3 is wholly owned and distributed by PolishExpress, Inc.