MyHeritage Releases Innovative Family Tree Chart

The Sun Chart is designed to be the most spatially efficient way to display a descendant family tree with photos

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, June 15, 2016 — MyHeritage, the fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, released today the Sun Chart — a new type of descendant fan chart, available to all users of MyHeritage for free. The center of the Sun Chart features an ancestor selected by the user, with multiple generations of descendants in the outer rings. This chart is the world's first descendant fan chart with personal photos, unique to MyHeritage.

The Sun Chart is designed to place as many descendants as possible on the smallest possible chart, scaling to hundreds and even thousands of people, making it ideal for sharing with relatives at a family reunion or get-together. Descendant charts that would not fit in a room if arranged horizontally or vertically, can now be prepared in this compact circular format and hung conveniently on the wall. It is designed to be the most compact family tree chart, while offering a very eye-catching and attractive visualization of a family tree, complete with photos.

The Sun Chart design was inspired by a family tree chart format that MyHeritage staff encountered multiple times while researching family history in Corfu, Greece. It was used for centuries by the Jewish community in Corfu, and the researchers immediately saw that it offered a unique benefit: a different segment is allocated for each person, proportional to the extent of descendants he or she has, creating a very compact layout that can easily be extended as new generations are born.

"The new Sun Chart is a perfect example of MyHeritage's unique approach," said Uri Gonen, Senior VP of Product Management at MyHeritage. "We bridge together cutting-edge technologies and an appreciation for the wisdom of generations past. When our research on the genealogy of the community in Corfu revealed an unusual and highly useful family tree format, we decided to harness our technological abilities to bring the benefit of this style of family tree chart to as many people as possible, and added personal photos to make it even more appealing."

Sun Charts provide extensive configuration options to control photo size, font size, and level of included detail, so users can customize each chart to their needs. MyHeritage has developed an algorithm for compacting the charts, which calculates every person's position precisely in order to result in the smallest possible chart.

Personal photos are included in the chart, helping to bring the family tree to life, and creating a visualization that is more appealing and interesting.

After generating the chart, users can download it in PDF format and print it themselves at home or at any printer, or email it to their family members. MyHeritage also provides an integrated poster printing service that is useful for charts of unusual size, with worldwide shipping.

Sun Charts are free. To generate a Sun Chart, users can sign up on MyHeritage for free and start a new tree, or import their existing tree as GEDCOM.

About MyHeritage

MyHeritage is the world's fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history. As technology thought leaders, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s accessible and instantly rewarding. Its global user community enjoys access to a massive library of historical records, the most internationally diverse collection of family trees and groundbreaking search and matching technologies. Trusted by millions of families, MyHeritage provides an easy way to share family stories, past and present, and treasure them for generations to come. MyHeritage is available in 42 languages. www.myheritage.com