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Issue 6.2

REVIEW

Osk 4.11

Issue: 6.2 (January/February 2008)
Author: Dave Mancuso
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 3,948
Starting Page Number: 10
Article Number: 6206
Related Web Link(s):

http://www.studlar.net/en/software/osk_48.html

Full text of article...

Osk is a genealogy program originally localized in Icelandic. Recent versions have been developed for English, both for Macintosh and Windows. The program touts its speed, ease of use and ability to create websites of the family trees you create.

Osk is priced at $40 US dollars (this varies a bit from day to day due to fluctuating international exchange rates in the Kagi store). Regardless, it's less than half the cost of most competitive genealogy programs. That's a big attraction for the program, giving it a boost against long existing mainstays in its class (the English version of Osk is less than two years old).

Osk's interface is fairly straightforward. The easiest way to get up and running with it is to add each person to the database (they show up in the left column of the main window). You can then tie people together using the main window and the Father or Mother buttons. It's pretty easy to assemble a large family tree quickly. Osk gives you fields for extra information or notes for each person, and provides a number of statistics and reports on ancestors and descendants. It also reads and writes from the standard genealogy Gedcom format. Exporting to a website is a nice feature, but make sure you export to a new, empty folder. Osk creates an entire website for your family tree, with an HTML file for each person in the family.

So what could be improved in Osk? First, it would be good for future versions to standardize the menubar a bit more (Window and Help menus would do it). Some of the buttons in the program could be rebuilt to act more as expected (for instance, in the Export to Web dialog box, the pop up button actually opens a modal dialog window instead of a pop up menu).

In addition, I noticed a few minor bugs, possibly due to OS X Leopard (I tested Osk on Mac OS X Leopard and on Windows XP). I have a feeling that they'll be fixed by the time you read this, however. Studlar updates Osk frequently. This is a huge plus. Studlar obviously believes in the "update early and often" policy. Customers benefit from bug fixes and new features, and Studlar benefits from consistent return traffic to its website and higher interest in Osk.

In a related note, Studlar deserves kudos for its website. The site is clean and well designed (Sandvox-based at present), but the news section and active weblog show that the developer is very enthusiastic and engaged with its product and user base. I'd like to see a support forum, but it's obvious that the developer is engaged with (and in tune with) his user base.

Another nice touch is the Softpedia 100% clean badge on the website. Regardless of how you feel about these kinds of endorsements, it shows that the developer cares about making customers feel comfortable with his product.

I think that Osk has some clear needs that should be addressed in future versions, but with an enthusiastic developer and continual refinement and updates, Osk is definitely a contender in its field.

End of article.