most commonly used alignment viewers

[nat]

Hi there,

I am trying to get a feel for the mosy commonly used/ well regarded alignment viewers out there. I have had a read of the sticky thread outlining what options are available, but Im interested in what people think are well regarded in terms of:

ease of use and well supported
which require local install/ only webtool available
can you navigate in at the genome level (ie. with Affymetrix IGB viewer)
which are more suitable for short/long read data - or one that caters for both
Do they take standard output from commonly used ailgners (velvet/bowtie/maq) - or is there much file manipulation before the viewer can be used.

Are people using SAMtools much?

Thanks,

Natalie

[zee]

I have been using the Integrated Genomics Viewer for my short read work.

See http://www.broadinstitute.org/igv/index.html

Heng Li also did a good review of viewers at http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Users/lh3/NGSalnview.shtml


IGV works nicely with BED, BAM and GFF files. It does the job for most of my tasks.