Data-loading interface

[rabdill]

What do you think about removing the text boxes from the data input UI? This step probably doesn't need to support copy/paste, especially if we use the new file formatting (#39). We could have:

• File upload prompt – ASV table (samples x ASVs)
• File upload prompt – taxa x ASVs
• File upload prompt (optional) – sample metadata
• Drop-down for selecting example dataset
  • Ran suggested offering multiple options here—they would all be formatted in the same way as the user data, if that's helpful, but I'm still processing the raw data (Generate example data for users to load as a trial #36). Maybe positioning this next to the three prompts would indicate this would replace those files with pre-made ones?

[vincerubinetti]

I think we'd want to keep the text boxes for a few reasons.

Unless it's some very common format, the user will need to know what format to upload their data in, and that's best communicated by just showing it, as opposed to telling in text or making them download the example files and open them in a text editor.

Maybe the most common mode of user input will be uploading a local file, but I feel like it's still nice to support copy/paste. I'm imagining a user who has just run an analysis in R that they just printed to console instead of saving. They might want to quickly just transfer it over instead of having the file as a middleman.

We can make the textboxes smaller and less obtrusive though. Or worst case they can appear on demand, like clicking a small button with some kind of textbox icon and it'll show.