I haven't seen ABrowse in action, but I looked at what are some features that ABrowse claims to have and here are some ideas about how JBrowse might offer similar functions
- On-the-fly submit selected entries to Galaxy and WebLab for further analysis.
You can add custom javascript callbacks to JBrowse to allow it to perform a variety of actions and so you could possibly use this to submit jobs to Galaxy.
You might ask the JBrowse mailing list to see if they have examples of Galaxy integration.
- Compatible with BioMart engine for bulk data retrieval.
I know that BioMart has a SPARQL query interface, and since JBrowse supports SPARQL backend, you could possibly use JBrowse to retrieve and display data from BioMart.
- SOAP-based web service interface, fully compatible with Taverna.
JBrowse has no backend server side code, it's a 100% client based javascript app, so it doesn't really offer web-services like ABrowse might. There are some other software systems such as Intermine that have better integration with JBrowse and web services though.
- Easy to install, configure and customize for different user requirements.
I think JBrowse is also easy to install, configure, and customize (extensive customizations possible via javascript! no complex server side code :)
Feel free to ask the gmod-ajax mailing list for jbrowse topics, beginner or advanced!