The Generations Network runs one of the most popular genealogy websites in the world – ancestry.com.  One of the things they wanted to provide their users was a simplified way to browse and edit their family tree.  Even smaller trees can become a bit unwieldy and very large trees can become nearly impossible to navigate – particularly when you talk about using html based technologies.  The team at TGN decided to leverage a Rich Internet Application platform and after surveying the existing technologies decided that Silverlight was the best technology to use in this situation. Microsoft has produced a case study documenting their project which you can find here.

From the case study:

The Generations Network (TGN), through its flagship Ancestry.com Web site, is the world’s leading resource for online family history, providing services to millions of users worldwide. To enhance the appeal of its Web sites, TGN wanted to revamp its Family Tree Viewer application to provide a graphically rich experience and fast performance—a combination that was hard to deliver with its existing development tools. The company decided to become an early adopter of the Microsoft® Silverlight™ browser plug-in, which is based on development tools that TGN is already familiar with such as Microsoft Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Suite and Microsoft Visual C#®. TGN used Silverlight to create a prototype of the application an estimated 30 percent faster than it would have taken using Adobe Flash. TGN expects the rich Internet application to keep the company ahead of its competitors.