April 15, 2008 (Vol. 28, No. 8)

URL:
http://lab.bcb.iastate.edu/yabi/

Rating:
Strong Points: Links, news
Weak Points: Annoying cursor behavior

Summary:
I was contacted last year by a group of students at Iowa State University who had created this site as a result of their own initiative and I thought it deserved mention. With an aim to “build the most comprehensive collection of bioinformatics-related links on the web, these folks weren’t fooling around.” Did they succeed? Well, to be honest, the answer is not quite, but the effort is a notable one. First, the site’s plusses include an up-to-date news section, and the YABI part, which has nice hierarchical organizational scheme and a considerable number of listings. What’s not to like? For starters, the section in YABI with hyperlinks has a VERY annoying feature where when the cursor is placed over a hyperlink, a thumbnail view of the link is presented that gets in the way of everything that you do. This is very annoying at best. Second, while the list of links is, indeed, impressive, it is not the most extensive collection I’ve seen, though it is pretty good and it is nicely thought out. A very nice student effort.

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