Recent Updates

Did you notice that we have started tracking and highlighting updates for all our records? Update notifications are now displayed in FlyBase HitLists, reports, and via ATOM/RSS feeds for each report. This is a feature that many of you have asked for and we hope you find it helpful. We would also greatly appreciate it if you could take a moment to let us know what you think about this feature or anything else that you like, dislike, or would like to see on FlyBase.

What do updates show?

At this time, the information we track for updates include new links between a FlyBase report and other FlyBase data classes (e.g. genes, references, stocks) or controlled vocabulary terms (e.g. GO, anatomy terms). We do not currently track gene model changes or links that have been removed. We do have plans to add the ability to track gene model changes in the near future. Update information is available starting with our FB2010_08 release and on.

Updates in FlyBase HitLists

The first place to find information about updates is on any FlyBase HitList. If your record has an update in the current FlyBase release it will have a small red flag located next to one of the fields (Symbol, Genotype, Author, etc.) in your list of search results. Holding your mouse over the flag for a few seconds will popup a window containing links to the newly added items. Records flagged with small green flags indicate a newly added record or one that is the result of a merge/split of existing FlyBase records.

Figure 1. Updates flagged in HitList

Updates in FlyBase Reports

Updates in FlyBase reports are displayed in two ways. First, we've added a new section called Recent Updates to our reports. This section contains a list of updates for the report spanning the 3 most recent FlyBase releases and a link to a page listing updates for all releases (from FB2010_08 and on). Second, updated items for the current release are highlighted in light green throughout the report page.

Figure 2. Recent Updates section in report

Figure 3. Highlighting of updated items

Update Feed

We have also started providing this update information in the form of an ATOM feed for each individual report. The links to the ATOM feed for any FlyBase report can be found in the Recent Updates section or in the location bar of your browser when viewing a report (your browser must support RSS/ATOM feeds). Using these links and your favorite news aggregator you can automatically be notified when your favorite gene, insertion, allele, etc. is updated. If you prefer to get updates in the form of an email then we suggest using a service such as Feed My Inbox to pull from our RSS/ATOM feeds and convert them into emails.

Figure 4. Orange ATOM/RSS icon in Firefox location bar