The webGED Progenitor packages have been targeted to users who wish to build full-featured searchable websites from their genealogy gedcom files, but do not have web accounts that would allow them to execute sophisticated "server-side" display programs. Such users generally find that their choices are limited to
The wedGED Progenitor product was introduced to offer a third choice: generate a complete set of web-site files that included built-in search, navagation, and chart generation capabilities and that still could be simply uploaded to the user's own "personal space" without requiring any special server privleges.
The original webGED Progenitor 1 product was written almost ten years ago and initially released in January 1997 as a free beta. The full commercial version, Progenitor 2, was released in April 1999 and enjoyed great success. The underlying technology in these early versions was Sun's Java, which was a good choice for that period. Subsequently, however, corporate warfare erupted between Microsoft and Sun over support of Java in Microsoft browsers. Microsoft has kept its version of Java frozen at the 1996 level of the language. At times, it has even removed all support for Java from its browsers - and then eventually reluctantly restored it in response to a legal suit by Java. In addition, changes are occasionally made to the underlying Microsoft OS which have had unannounced side-effects requiring modifications to some Java code. Finally, Microsoft has indicated that Java will not be supported within its new Vista operating system.
In the face of this chaos, support of the webGED Progenitor 2 product became increasingly burdensome and it was withdrawn from the market in August 2002 [see withdrawal notice]. Although Progenitor could have been redesigned to work with Sun's Java "plug-in" rather than relying on Microsoft's native support, the inconvenience of requiring all potential site-viewers to install the plug-in, as well as its size and complexity, made this commercially unattractive. At that time, we indicated that we were intending to investigate alternative technologies that could support a future Progenitor 3 product without the need for Java support.
The webGED Progenitor 3 prototype is the result of some on-going experiments in providing Progenitor 2 type capabilities without the use of Java. It is very important to note that, in its present state, it is by no means a finished product. It has been written just to be a "proof-of-concept" prototype to examine the performance characteristics of various techniques and to work out the broad design framework of a possible commercial version. In this regard, the results so far have been promising and it tentatively appears that a commercially viable product could be built without the need for Java support.
No decision has yet been made, however, to continue on to the building of such a commercial version. There are several potentially troublesome technical areas that are yet to be investigated. Still to be examined, for example, are the features intended to support the display of narrative "notes" and source citations, the printing of the various charts, etc. Cross-browser support will have to be added (the prototype will only run under MSIE 6 and above). In addition, the development of a commercially viable version would require a clean rewrite of the gedcom-conversion module, which in the prototype has been stiched together from the old Progenitor 2 code. Any decision to procede will have to be based on a determination that the techniques employed in the prototype can provide the necessary capabilities to make the product competitive, that the vulnerability to potential changes in operating system support are not excessive, and that the market place will support a registration fee that will fund the continued improvement and maintenance of the product.