Fishbase Client - Makes searching Fishbase quicker and more intuitive.

FishBase is an amazing tool for both scientists and aquarists. But it can be chore navigating the web site, and not all the mirrors work equally quickly all the time. FishBase Client speeds things up by making searches easier and by providing a quick way to toggle between Fishbase mirrors around the world.

Credit where credit's due: while this program doesn't use any FishBase data directly, I'd like to make a point of acknowledging the awesome work done by the FishBase team.

Use

Launch the application. You will see the application window has five tabbed sections. Each allows a different type of search:

• Species: Type in the genus and species name, e.g., Betta splendens. You will be taken directly to that fish's page.
• Genus: Type in the genus name, e.g., Haplochromis. You will be presented with a listing of all the fish that have (or have had) that genus name. This will include those species for which the genus name is invalid (i.e., a synonym) as well as those for which the name is valid.
• Genus (Strict): As above, but this time only those species for which the genus name is currently valid will be shown.
• Common: Type in a common name, such as "goldfish" or "perch". You will get a listing of those species for which that common name has been used.
• Family: Type in a family name, e.g., Cichlidae. You have two options. Pressing "List" will give you a listing of all the currently recognised species within that family. Pressing "Summary" gives you a summary of the biology of the family.

The Examples menus contains half a dozen fish species that can be put into the search fields automatically. If you aren't familiar with FishBase or what the terms used for these searches are all about, have a play with these examples.

Besides launching FishBase in your browser, FishBase Client keeps puts the URL for the search in question into a field from which it can be copied for use elsewhere, e.g., in the bibliography of an essay.

Closing FishBase Client quits the application. Note that FishBase doesn't correct misspellings or other formatting errors, so if you put rubbish into the fields, you will likely get an error message back. Also note that sometimes a search will fail on one FishBase mirror but work fine on another. I have no idea why this is, but that's a good reason to try alternative mirrors if the default doesn't work.

Fishbase Mirrors

Along the bottom are six buttons that will force the search to use one of the FishBase mirrors. As a general rule, all should work equally well, but sometimes searches on one mirror fail but work on another. You may also find that the mirror closest to your home returns results more quickly.

Development

Fishbase Client was created because I found the ‘official’ web site interface too slow and clunky for the kinds of searches I wanted to do.

• 1.2.2. -- Defaulted to Fishbase.org (common name search at .de mirror broken)
• 1.2.1 -- All search strings in a single field; application window can now be resized; closing window quits application; changing search type clears away previous search search string; added Examples menu
• 1.2 -- Added support for six FishBase mirrors
• 1.1.1 -- Added Intel Mac support
• 1.1 -- Added alternate family search
• 1.0 -- First version, developed using REALBasic

Bugs

I'm not aware of any, but if you find some, let me know!

Download

• Mac OS X
• Windows
• Linux

License

• Freeware

Screenshots

• Macintosh

• Windows