I love the idea that all the development and product is to be shared in an open-source styley, but I'm struggling with its implementation. For me it's over-engineered, with style over substance. Does this application really need Google earth style navigation especially as it's so easy to loose the tree from your field of view. You can spend more time flying around trying to navigate and position yourself to view it than actually looking at the content. Thinking about the audience groups, maybe this needs looking at.
I agree that the navigation is clumsy and non-intuitive.
So much is missing - all non-animals except E-coli, for a start. Also molluscs and annelids, to mention just two common (or garden) phylla. I've spotted at least one apparent mistake, putting Opabinia in the current day. And why does the millipede appear grouped with the Onychophora unless you look really closely?
The mammels section has problems too - can't it allow that chimps and humans are a little more closely related than is implied by both being cynodontia? And it admits obsure catagories such as eumuroida without including rodents or primates...
I've been looking for just something like this for use with children, and I hope it will be really good after more development. But it's not there yet...
More detailed (colour) pictures and names on mouse-over would help for children I think, as would more use of common names as well as latin ones.
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I love the idea that all the development and product is to be shared in an open-source styley, but I'm struggling with its implementation. For me it's over-engineered, with style over substance. Does this application really need Google earth style navigation especially as it's so easy to loose the tree from your field of view. You can spend more time flying around trying to navigate and position yourself to view it than actually looking at the content. Thinking about the audience groups, maybe this needs looking at.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the navigation is clumsy and non-intuitive.
ReplyDeleteSo much is missing - all non-animals except E-coli, for a start. Also molluscs and annelids, to mention just two common (or garden) phylla. I've spotted at least one apparent mistake, putting Opabinia in the current day. And why does the millipede appear grouped with the Onychophora unless you look really closely?
The mammels section has problems too - can't it allow that chimps and humans are a little more closely related than is implied by both being cynodontia? And it admits obsure catagories such as eumuroida without including rodents or primates...
I've been looking for just something like this for use with children, and I hope it will be really good after more development. But it's not there yet...
More detailed (colour) pictures and names on mouse-over would help for children I think, as would more use of common names as well as latin ones.