Enhanced scale bar and ruler

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The scale bar and ruler have been sitting on top of genome heatmap for quite a while. They couldn't interact with user in any sort of manner, except for providing some minimum information like map position and scale.

Now we're in 2012, things are changing. First of all, the scale bar can be used like a real ruler. Following is its appearance:

On the left of scale bar you can find length of spanned region. You can move the scale bar around by dragging on it:

Dragging won't change span of the scale. To change it, use the downward arrow on the right side. Drag and move it horizontally to change span of the scale bar, the spanning length will update at mean time:

In this way, you can use scale bar to measure length of a region, just like using a ruler.

And about the ruler, it can be used like ... chromosome ideogram. Same as using chromosome ideogram, you can do zooming in by dragging on the ruler: