Background

ExploreTree started as a winning entry in the Processing Time code jam, written by Madeleine Price Ball and Chris Ball. It takes descriptions of trees in Newick format — the tree used by the applet above is the phylogenetic tree of life — and renders them in a zooming interface. It's written using the nifty visualization language Processing.

Tree data

This version of the tree of life was downloaded from the Interactive Tree of Life webpage.

Source code

ExploreTree is free software which you can distribute under the GNU GPLv2 or (at your option) any later version. You can download the source at github: exploretree, libnewicktree.

To run it, check out the exploretree source into your Processing sketchbook directory, and then run the sketch. If you'd like to use a different tree, just replace data/treeoflife.tree with your own.

Authors

The current version of ExploreTree was written by Madeleine Price Ball. Please send feedback to: mad-exploretree@printf.net