Issue loading GAL4 images

[Jonathan M Blagburn Perryman]

To whom it may concern,

I have been a user of Virtual Fly Brain for several years (since before COVID), and have found it extremely useful, so first, thank you for that!

I am primarily looking at images of GAL4 enhancer fragment expression patterns (the Janelia and Vienna tile collections) so I do not know if my issue applies to any other image types.

Normally, I search for the line and the thumbnail image appears quickly. In previous years the corresponding Slice viewer and 3D viewer images sometimes, but not always, loaded automatically, in which case double-clicking the thumbnail seemed to start the loading.

However, in recent months I have been finding that the Slice viewer and 3D viewer images do not load at all, even after frantically clicking the thumbnail. The only way to get them to load (slowly) is to refresh the page - this works about 50% of the time. Is there some other way to start this that I am not aware of?

It is important to point out that I only seem to have this problem with the GAL4 lines - I have found that the Vienna LexA images load rapidly, often without further prompting. This suggests perhaps  that the issue is not due to idiosyncrasies of my particular system (Windows 10, Chrome, 30- 50 Mbps connection), which has not changed in several years.

I would be grateful if you could help me resolve this issue - it does rather slow down my workflow!

Thanks a lot for your help!

Sincerely 

Jonathan Blagburn

[Robbie Court]

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for such a clear report. The detail made this much easier to track down, and your observation that the Vienna LexA lines behaved differently turned out to be the key to it.

The cause was not specific to the GAL4 collections. When you search for a line, the top result is normally the expression pattern itself rather than one particular image, and clicking a thumbnail from there was updating the term information panel without ever asking the viewers to load the image. Nothing failed visibly, which is why repeated clicking never helped. The Vienna LexA lines behaved differently only because searching for one takes you straight to an image, which then loaded normally. Refreshing worked because opening the page from a link does ask for the image.

This is now fixed and has gone out in today's release. Clicking a thumbnail loads the slice and 3D views directly, with no refreshing or repeated clicking needed. You may need one hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) to pick up the new version.

Do let us know if anything still misbehaves, and thanks again for taking the time to report it.

Best,
Robbie

[Jonathan M Blagburn Perryman]

Hi Rob,

Glad I could help! It works! I did wonder when I first connected, because the version number and date hasn't changed.

Best wishes,

Jonathan 

Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device
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From: Rob Court <rco...@ed.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, 10 August 2026 17:25:13
To: Jonathan M Blagburn Perryman <jonathan...@upr.edu>
Cc: sup...@virtualflybrain.org <sup...@virtualflybrain.org>
Subject: Re: [vfb-support] Issue loading GAL4 images

 

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for such a clear report. The detail made this much easier to track down, and your observation that the Vienna LexA lines behaved differently turned out to be the key to it.

The cause was not specific to the GAL4 collections. When you search for a line, the top result is normally the expression pattern itself rather than one particular image, and clicking a thumbnail from there was updating the term information panel without ever asking the viewers to load the image. Nothing failed visibly, which is why repeated clicking never helped. The Vienna LexA lines behaved differently only because searching for one takes you straight to an image, which then loaded normally. Refreshing worked because opening the page from a link does ask for the image.

This is now fixed and has gone out in today's release. Clicking a thumbnail loads the slice and 3D views directly, with no refreshing or repeated clicking needed. You may need one hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) to pick up the new version.

Do let us know if anything still misbehaves, and thanks again for taking the time to report it.

Best,

Robbie

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