Mason: a JavaScript web site widget for visualizing and comparing annotated features in nucleotide or protein sequences

Table 1 Comparison of main features between Mason and pViz.js

Feature	Mason	pViz.js	FeatureViewer
Simple, standalone component	✓	✓	‡
Dynamic interface	✓	✓	✓
Click and mouseover events	✓	✓	✓
No browser plugins required	✓	✓	✓
Data-driven coloring and shading	✓	†	✓
Optimized for many overlapping annotations	✓
Row-level summary bars	✓
Zooming		✓	✓
Customizable annotation shapes		✓	✓
Export Image			✓

†pViz.js, by default, supports color customization via CSS, which requires pre-defined color definitions for classes of annotations in advance and is not amenable to true data-driven coloring schemes where color may indicate any possible value. ‡DasFeatureViewer extension of FeatureViewer requires a server-side DAS data source (SimpleFeatureViewer does not).

ISSN: 1756-0500