Introduction of Inspector docking mode and minor Interface tweak

Release 2.7.2

Per some user feedback, two changes have been made to the interface. The first change: the inspector has now been given a docking mode to allow the user to dock the inspector to the right of the workspace. The motivation being to match the preferences both of the user who wants the inspector to be tightly coupled with the atom it is currently viewing and the user who wants it to not be distracting to their process of interacting with the molecule. The second change is more of a tweak: after dragging and dropping a skeleton or addition segment on the workspace, the animation of it snapping back to its origin has been removed to reduce clutter.

Controls - The inspector can now be docked on the right of the workspace by clicking the right arrow in the top-right section. It can be un-docked (back to being displayed near the atom hovered over) by clicking on the left arrow when it is docked.

Addition of Discover section to Home Page

Release 2.7.1

The Discover section in the Home Page was implemented. In this section the user can select a reactant from a list of common organic molecules, select a reaction to perform on the reactant, and then click on the beaker to see the result of the reaction. The motivation of this feature is to show a light-weight implementation of what will eventually become a full-fledged feature: exploring hypothetical products created when specified reactions are applied to a reactant(s).

Standards - No new standards have been applied for this update: Standard IUPAC naming rules are still followed.

Controls - The Discover section was designed to be intuitive. The user selects a starting molecule from the drop-up list, selects a reaction from the drop-up list, and finally clicks the beaker icon to see the result.

Future considerations - The full-fledged feature will be designed to work with all reactants and reactions supported by the interface and the pathway search engine. Additionally, support for multiple products of the reaction and expected percentage of each will be in place.

Introduction of visual feedback for attaching atoms via drag and drop, Allowing attachment of skeletons, Minor bug fix

Release 2.7.0

The motivation of this update was to lay the groundwork for the user to create more complex molecules in the interface. One motivating example, in particular, was the creation of Tylenol.

The first feature comes in the form of a visual cue: the user will now have feedback when dragging an attachment over an atom as the atom to be attached to will change color. This color will be a hybrid of the particular atom's color and gray. The goal of this feature is to make it clear a) when a user has dragged an atom to the proper position and b) to which atom the new attachment will be attached. This is useful, for example when creating Tylenol as the attachments to the benzene are oriented at the para position, so it needs to be clear which Carbons in the benzene are being used.

The second feature is that users can now attach basic Carbon skeletons to the molecule as radicals. In the previous creation of Tylenol, the user would have to drag two consecutive Carbon atoms to create the acetyl group attached to the amine group. Now the user can simply drag one ethyl radical to the amine group from the alkanes section of the Skeleton panel on the left. In the future we plan to allow more complex groups/radicals to be attached as well.

Finally, a bug was fixed that occurred when extending a skeleton length from the right side of the skeleton.

Standards - No new standards have been applied for this update: Standard IUPAC naming rules are still followed with attachment of basic Carbon skeletons.

Controls - The controls hopefully have been simplified with this update. Users can now attach both skeletons from the left panel and individual atoms from the bottom panel. The visual cue should also make correct positioning of attachments easier.

Future Considerations - The exact detection of an attachment hovering over an atom MIGHT be changed in the future. Right now it's skewed a bit to the down right direction in order to allow the user to still see the atom to which the new attachment will be attached. This may be tweaked in the future. Plans are in place to allow even more complex radicals and potentially custom radicals to be attached. One motivating case would be allowing a Phenol group to be attached to simplify the creation of the Tylenol molecule even further.