In my last post about the Law of Inevitable Stagnation, I proposed that many (most?) web-based scientific applications eventually go stale. I mentioned this to a colleague and SymAtlas user recently, and he had an interesting suggestion. He wondered if SymAtlas wasn’t so popular because it was stagnant.

The implication of course is that we developers sometimes get overzealous in pursuing the latest web technologies. What we sometimes fail to realize though is that adopting these technologies often results in neutral or even negative effects on usability. Even slight positive benefits can be outweighed simply because our users now have to learn a new interface.

We’ve done our best to keep BioGPS free of those cotton-candy “improvements”. Moreover, recognizing that we’re trying to appeal to our SymAtlas user base, we’ve also tried to preserve the look and feel that you’re used to. How are we doing? Feedback / comments / questions / complaints are always welcome — biogps -at- gnf -dot- org.