January 14, 2012
Thank you to those who have shared your thoughts and comments about the new site. I am very proud of our new look and all the features it incorporates. For the past year we worked with web design professionals and conducted studies to determine an optimal design for the SGD pages. Since the inception of SGD, the standards for computer-human interfaces and website usability have advanced and we realize that we must embrace these changes in order to reach out to all communities that depend on SGD. The new pages address many previously identified issues and the new design allows the 21,000 weekly users of SGD to more effectively find the information they require. In addition to providing a modern look, the new design greatly decreases the learning curve for new users.
I am delighted that our Search has been enhanced to provide auto-suggest and auto-complete features. The new Search interface gives access to more types of information and facilitates the discovery of huge amounts of information integrated at SGD. Easier access to all the data is also facilitated by recent tool enhancements and data additions. Over the past year several hundred new datasets have been added to the Genomic Browser and we will continue to add new data at about the same rate. This year will also see the addition of new types of data, in particular strain genomic sequence.
I appreciate that change can be difficult. I hope that adjusting to the new site will not be too onerous and, in addition to the data which you are accustomed to getting from the site, you will discover new datatypes useful to you that you may not have realized were contained within SGD. I thank you again for providing me feedback on the new and more powerful SGD and ask that you please continue to send questions and comments to the SGD HelpDesk.
Wishing you all the best in 2012,
Mike
J. Michael Cherry, Ph.D.
Associate Professor (Research)
Department of Genetics
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-5120
Categories: Website changes