Improved interface for Gene Plot function

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Gene Plot function has undergone two slight changes again:

improved user interface on-demand loading of Google Chart library

Following is a quick overview.

At floating toolbox, click "Apps" button to show the list of "apps":

The Gene Plot panel will be displayed on top of the browser panel:

Now you can drag this panel around using the narrow header on top of panel.

As revealed by the interface layout, the Gene Plot consists of 4 steps. Start with "Step 0" by entering some genes into the text area:

At next step choose a track with quantitative data. Track name will be printed out for the selected one:

Choose a graph type for "step 2". By default the first type "Quartiles & extremes" is selected.

Last step is choosing rendering method. The method will be chosen from the drop-down menu. By default the "R software" is the only available method, and "Google Chart" method is disabled. This is to speed up page loading, and won't cause loading to pause for long time if Google service is actually blocked at user's location (which is known to happen in some countries). 

If you have working internet connection for Google, you will be able to enjoy Google Chart service by clicking the "enable" button. Once the external libraries are imported, the page will print out some message to reflect:

From above the Google Chart option in drop-down menu is active. Find the orange button on bottom of panel and press it to make the plot. Once done, the plot will be displayed in same panel:

Finally by clicking the stripe on the top, you can go back to control options and re-do the graph.