[Bioperl-l] Deobfuscator interface now available

[Sendu Bala]

Amir Karger wrote:
> This tool is quite nice, and may save me a lot of perdoc'ing.

Yes, many thanks to everyone involved.


> A couple of minor interface thoughts. 
> 
> 1)There's quite a lot of methods for many of the classes. As such, I
> think I'll often want to browse through what's available in a class. But
> 60% or so of the screen real estate is used for "Enter a search
> string... OR select a class from the list". IMO, it would be better to
> have two pages, a search page and a result page.   It only takes a click
> on Back (or a "new search" button) to get to a new search, and now you
> can use your whole screen for reading your results.

As the compromise it must be, I like the way it behaves. I don't like 
lots of windows. I especially don't like pop up windows. Right now when 
I'm using the bioperl docs I tend to have a whole bunch of tabs open to 
different class pages at once, so being able to see an overview all on 
one page in Deobfuscator is very nice.

Further to that, I'd love it if clicking on a method name caused an 
in-place css(&|javascript) reveal (similar to how a well implemented 
drop down menu works in a website) rather than a new window opened. 
Alternatively, just have more columns in the results table, ie. usage, 
function, returns, args columns. I feel that opening a window for each 
method you want to understand is far too slow.

I'd also really like a link to the code for the method as well. The 
bioperl docs are rarely complete enough that you can really understand 
what every method is supposed to do without looking at the code.


> 3) Minimalist is nice, but documentation is even nicer. It wasn't clear
> to me that the search searches within class names rather than function
> names. What I really want to know sometimes is which module has, say,
> the revcom method in it.

This would be a great feature to add.


Another minor interface thought:
6) Have a little more cell padding in all the tables. Things are just a 
little too cramped and things start to look messy/ run into each other.