auspice
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nextstrain
User cannot identify and click individual branch if there are too many
Context
I cannot find or click on the purple branch because they are thin in a dense region.
Description
There are two ways I can think of to solve this problem.
One of them is to remove the topmost clade, which I am uninterested in at the moment, and let the rest of the tree expand and fill the vertical space. This could be: right click on a branch or node and hide-descendants.
The other is to allow zooming in the vertical dimension. For example, right click on any branch and zoom-1.5x. This would allow the user to select a fixed branch to zoom to, pushing the other branches away from it so individual branches can be distinguished from one another.
There are more complex solutions, such as allowing a user to filter and then re-layout the tree given filters. Or, to click on a node, and allow me to intelligently subset the tree to its "neighborhood", given some options for neighborhood. If it were the latter, we might add a button or other interface in the popover for a node with options for kinds of neighborhood (path to root, distance < k, etc).
Example
Were I able to locate and click on the branch I wanted, I would get this subset. (I was only able to get here by finding a later branch, zooming to it, and iteratively going to a parent.)
This is a substantial usability issue, especially as the numbers of sequences continues growing. The solution could be as simple as a button that allows for greatly increased height of the tree card.
(Sorry, mis-clicked) I agree that this is a significant issue. I like these suggestions. I have an idea here about how to generally approach this. I'll try to write it up in the next day or two.
Here's my proposed UX solution: https://github.com/nextstrain/auspice/issues/1132. Sorry to split threads, wanted to keep discussion here to fixes to your particular issue Josh and wanted specific feedback on my proposal in #1132.
The first steps of tackling this issue are represented by #1257. With proper "zoom to selected" implemented we would then need more expressive ways to filter to tips of interest (via lasso, etc...).
Vertical zooming would go some way to help with this horizontal zooming issue #1360.
The most generic solution I can think of would be zoom to rectangle. The tips are redrawn so as to fit only those on the screen that are within the rectangle.
