First a big thx for your work on making things look simpler with the new button hiding.
However there are a few changes that really gets in the way of using the lab results. A lot of these issues goes back to way before your time. However some of the new changes brings them back up as a problem.
Why the See Results doesn’t cut it
What I like:
1: It shows Lab Title, Design title and score
2: I can get directly back to the lab list without further clicking
However I miss what is most important to me. To see the designs in native mode - for both states. I find it far more useful watching switches in native mode as I don’t care what target they are supposed to fold up in, rather I wish to see what structure they are estimated to actually fold into.
Why View/Copy doesn’t cut it
What is a problem
1: It doesn’t show Lab Title, Design title and score
2: I can’t get directly back to the lab list without further clicking
What I like:
I don’t have to set base colors each time I enter
This interface shows native estimate for both states.
When I have seen the design all I really want is to get back to the lab list. And then it will get extra tedious if I have to make extra clicks each time I want to do that for a design. Not all of the functions are reachable by shortcuts.
So the real problem is that I can’t get to what I wish from any of the interfaces. It is not together in any one of them at once.
Plus the new problem that the hidden buttons pose - is that it doesn’t save clicking, but add additional clicking each time I enter a design and need to change view to get what I want to see or when I leave the design.
Eli, thank you for writing this up so systematically! I’ve been feeling something similar but haven’t taken the time to write it up. Although my use case is a little different, the need is essentially the same.
The use case is for anyone who wants to write about a synthesized lab design, or go directly to a design from a spreadsheet, fusion table or any other tool, to be able to link to a page that displays all the available information for understanding what that design actually did in the lab.
I could list the specific elements that would be useful, but I think the only thing over and above Eli’s request is that the page have a unique URL, since the use case is to link to the page from anywhere.
@Omei, assuming you have a lab_id and a solution_id, you can construct:
/game/browse/ (lab_id) /?filter1_arg2= (sol_id) &filter1_arg1= (sol_id) &filter1=Id
which is the filtered design list view (I’ll admit, not very useful)
/game/solution/ (lab_id) / (sol_id) /copyandview/
which will directly show a lab design interface initialized with the corresponding sequence
Note: maybe this is the point that Eli is missing: when you click Copy/View, the applet does just that: instantiate a design interface, and seed it with the sequence you have previously selected in the design browser view. It does not keep a reference to that design, you’re working on a new one. It’s all we have, and it’s all we ever had. The Copy/View button was never more than an invitation to make mods.
/game/solution/ (lab_id) / (sol_id) /seeresult/
will show the lab data if available. Granted, without SHAPE data, this isn’t much either.
Note: In the lab results view, the assumption before the micro-array pipeline had always been that SHAPE reactivities would be the only concern (which is why the view starts in that mode) and that the native view would be advantageously replaced by an estimate based on both nearest neighbor rules and experimental data. Also, the target used to be the important reference in that view, not the structure predicted by the engine, whatever it was.
I agree that the data from the micro-array labs is currently hard and cumbersome to access. So far, there has been various difficulties in the way of cleaning this up: lack of resources, other priorities, and uncertainties as to what would be actually useful to implement. All of which is still current.
Vague statements won’t help here, constructive criticism and concrete suggestions could, eventually.
My mistake about no longer having a URL for the seeresults page. I guess I assumed that it no longer worked because it doesn’t show up in the address bar any more.
As for making the results page useful for the new switch labs, here’s the specific changes I think are needed for the new switch labs, i.e. the ones that don’t have SHAPE results.
Change the reporting of the score. Just the total Eterna score would be fine; sub-scores in addition would be even better. Don’t displaying the “classic” state-specific scores, which aren’t relevant.
Make base coloring the only option. There’s no need for the palette and beaker icons.
Replace Estimated mode with Natural mode, and make it the default. Allow the player to change the energy model, just as when creating a new lab solution.
I haven’t run this by Eli, but I think it is everything needed to address both our concerns.
It would also be nice to modify the seeresult URL: The lab id isn’t needed to uniquely identify the design. In some contexts (like the spreadsheets johana produces), the lab id isn’t known. It would improve access to the results page if there were a variation on the URL that didn’t require the lab id. But you would probably need a new API in the back end for that, requiring more coordination with John.
Hi Omei, yes, these suggestions sound reasonable and that’s more or less the direction I intend to take.
About the URLs, I don’t know what was the motivation to create them and/or how they work. The last two forms were created for the web-based design browser view, and I don’t know much about it. Possibly, we could add a different form, where the solution id would suffice.
This said, I currently have a top-level priority for the game that will most likely prevent me from even touching this topic for at least a month. I’ll do my best to shorten this delay, but as usual, no promises.
