Details
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Type:
Story
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Status: Open
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Priority:
Major
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Affects Version/s: None
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Fix Version/s: None
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Component/s: overview
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Labels:None
Description
The overview window helps greatly when working with large alignments but there are some inherent problems arising from its 'birds-eye view' nature.
Because the scale of the overview means that one pixel corresponds to many columns & rows, the user has to be 'pixel perfect' when interacting with the overview. This is accomplished in the simplest way in Jalview by providing visual feedback in the form of an adjustment of the overview's associated view's position when the user clicks in the overview window, but that feedback cannot be easily extended to guide the user for other kinds of interactions with the overview.
The feedback model also fails when a single pixel in the overview corresponds to hundreds of rows & columns - indeed - the whole interaction model for the overview begins to break down. Semantic zooming will be of some help, but the same limitation applies when one pixel corresponds to hundreds of features.
Because the scale of the overview means that one pixel corresponds to many columns & rows, the user has to be 'pixel perfect' when interacting with the overview. This is accomplished in the simplest way in Jalview by providing visual feedback in the form of an adjustment of the overview's associated view's position when the user clicks in the overview window, but that feedback cannot be easily extended to guide the user for other kinds of interactions with the overview.
The feedback model also fails when a single pixel in the overview corresponds to hundreds of rows & columns - indeed - the whole interaction model for the overview begins to break down. Semantic zooming will be of some help, but the same limitation applies when one pixel corresponds to hundreds of features.