Beginning version 6.7, IGB has a welcome screen that shows icons for species data sets.  Clicking on the icons should take the user to the latest data set for that species.

To add a new data set to the welcome screen follow these directions:

The term $IGB_HOME is used to refer to the root directory where you placed IGB's source code.  Refer to Get the code for instruction on getting IGB's code.

The welcome screen reads its data set configuration from $IGB_HOME/common/resources/display_species.txt
The text file is tab-separated.  Each line corresponds to a data set to be displayed by the welcome screen.   Lines beginning with the pound sign(#) are ignored as comment lines.  

• The file should have three entries separated by a tab character.
  <picture_path><tab><species data set name><tab><display label name>
• picture_name:  the picture path is relative to $IGB_HOME/common/resources/images.  The specifications for the picture should be:** PNG format** 400x266 full-bleed
• The species data set can be taken from the version combo box in IGB.  This key is important for the welcome component to tell IGB which data set should be loaded when the user clicks on it.  If IGB displays "Species name Not Available" on the status bar, there could be a typo on this field, or the data source may not be loaded.
• The label should be the name of the species.  This value is not used as key, so you should not worry about this setting when troubleshooting.

Once the three parameters are entered, IGB will display the new data set the next time it is started.  
Here is the sample text from the current display_species.txt:

a_lyrata.png A_lyrata_Apr_2011 A. lyrata
h_sapiens.png H_sapiens_Feb_2009 H. Sapiens
m_musculus.png M_musculus_Jul_2007 M. Musculus
a_thaliana.png A_thaliana_Jun_2009 A. Thaliana
d_melanogaster.png D_melanogaster_Apr_2006 D. Melanogaster
a_mellifera.png A_mellifera_Jan_2005 A. Mellifera
horse_pic_here E_caallus_Sep_2007 E. Caballus

Here is a sample picture:

If there is any failure to read the picture, a default picture is shown.