A few words of gratitude and motivation.: I was truly flummoxed by the commenter below who didn't understand why anyone would want this.. It's such a tangible reflection of our work and seeing big new swaths of it get filled in sometimes after just a couple connections is such a great way to see the value of collaboration. I have a manually filled-out version in my late Dad's hand printing from the 1990s (which will always be cherished, don't get me wrong), but what a pleasure to see this electronic version, with almost all the holes filled in, and reaching so much further back. A lot of people uncover dark secrets, but I've had the opposite. We used to think we had 6 revolutionaries--I'm up to fifteen and counting. We used to think we were descended from 3-4 filles du roi--well, turns out more like FIFTY-THREE, and though not many holes remain, still counting.
My broad design suggestion is not to view this just as primarily a tool to track the progress of your research, but also its huge potential to act as beautiful wall art that gives families something to have in common.to gather around and discuss.. Perhaps I'm spoiled by having mine virtually complete thanks to so much pre-work done by my mother, uncle, and great grandmother, as well as dozens of complete strangers out there. But in this esteemed crowd, I surely can't be the only one? And there are still stubborn brick walls that stand as a beacon of my failure, for all to see. But your option whether those empty cells should be white, which makes it such an apparent call to action, or in color, which camouflages the gap a little, is brilliant and accommodates both priorities..
I'm going on too long, so let me just sneak in one more: I suggest you make it mandatory to log into the Wikitree web server--there always seems to be something that eventually requires it, the biggest being having it know your default settings, and letting you see your private people. But waiting for the initial generations to build each time--God forbid you got further, is taxing on both our patience and the server. To speed this up, as a user, I would be fine downloading a cache to work with, as long as it's easy to pull down a synch of the data.