Re: [Gmod-ajax] Openlazlo

[Steve T. <st...@mo...>]

Hi,

> 
>>perhaps a Google Maps-type widget is lurking out there that's 
>>exactly what we need (though I doubt any available toolkit can do the 
>>scary things that Mitch is currently trying with tracks built entirely 
>>out of DIVs)
> 
> 
> I've been experimenting with this over the last few weeks, which is part
> of the reason I've been so quiet lately.  This is still in an extremely
> sketchy state, but there's enough there to get the idea:
> http://genome.biowiki.org/test/divbrowser/genome2.html
> 
> The features are exons from D. melanogaster chromosome 3R.  There are
> about 16,000, of which Firefox is able to show a few thousand on my
> hardware before it starts to bog down.  If you zoom out beyond about 3
> megabases the zooming gets to be quite slow, but that's above the point
> where we're currently switching to a feature density histogram for that
> track, anyway.
> 
> There's still some low-hanging fruit performance-wise, so I'm optimistic
> that it'll scale to a full set of tracks, especially if we're smart
> about interval search and attaching and detaching things from the DOM.
> And adjusting the threshold where we switch to a density histogram
> should accommodate hardware differences.
> 
> The rationale for using divs is:
> 1. reduces server side processing/storage for image tiles
> 2. allows for a nice client-side feature creation/editing UI
> 3. zooming is cool, but it's more than just eye candy--it helps you keep
> an intuitive sense of where you are
> 4. client can cache an entire chromosome worth of features (at least for
> some tracks)--given where firefox and WHAT-WG are going this may enable
> offline use in the future.
> 5. more cross-browser than SVG (I've been testing in firefox and IE 6/7
> and I'll be trying for Safari as well)
> 

Hey that is really cool! Reminds me of the Integrated Genome Browser zooming functionality.

I would be surprised if OpenLazlo could do the hardcore stuff but was wondering if it would be worth looking into using the components for other parts of the interface such as popups, menus, search 
forms, sidebars, annotation editing etc.

Cheers,

Steve
------------------------------------------------------------------
Medical Sciences Division
Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine/Sir William Dunn School
Oxford University