Maybe Formula mode is hard to find?

[katestange]

I'm not sure what to suggest on this point, but formula mode is hard to discover even when the user wants to do something more than they see available. Maybe we could standardize the "hardnesss" of the parameter pane, like a slider across the top that goes from "Simple / Medium / Power" modes or something. That way users could come to expect to have more power when they want it, instead of it being different for each visualizer. Or maybe there's another solution.

This relates to the discussion of skins. Skins are different in concept in that they are meant to guide the user to a particular group of settings for a particular purpose, as well as simplify the parameter pane. So you might have two different simple skins for grid, one for ulam type spirals, and another for comparing sequence terms against each other in (x,y) coordinates, or even one just for integerstellar type visualizations.

[gwhitney]

The issue highlighted here mainly pertains to Turtle at the moment, with its "List" mode and "Formula" mode selector way down near the bottom of its parameters, but will in general come up in the context of any skins we may create. In particular, any skin will have to know what it is based on and how to translate to that underlying (more powerful but more complicated) visualizer. So we think that perhaps any skin should have a fairly prominent button that allows you to switch to the "power mode" (i.e. the underlying visualizer).

I'll make a separate issue of what turtle as a skin might be like.