October 15, 2017 (Vol. 37, No. 18)
URL:
http://www.evolgenius.info/evolview/#mytrees
Rating:
Strong Points: Good documentation, standalone web application, easy to use
Weak Points: None
Summary:
EvolView is an online tool to generate and customize phylogenetic trees. Designed to be self-contained within a single webpage, EvolView is nicely organized to provide a central “canvas” on which the phylogenetic trees are displayed. Sidebar menus provide users easy access to most of the website’s functions to manipulate and annotate the trees. The resource is very well documented, having been described in multiple primary publications. The citations for and links to these publications are found on both the “citation” and “help” pages. Documentation for EvolView is housed on GitHub and is easily accessed from the EvolView website. Multiple demo datasets are included on the site for users to familiarize themselves with features to label and reorganize the trees, as well as tools to change the chart type to, say, heatmaps or dot plots.