User 870ab5b546
11-11-2004 02:33:20
I don't remember whether I brought this up already, but even if I did, now seems a good time to raise the issue again. I don't suppose you guys would consider developing a browser plug-in version of MarvinView to display .mol or .pdb or other chemical files to which a user has pointed a browser?
Journals such as JACS often have chemical structure files in their supporting information. The journals don't deliver applets to display the files, so the user needs either to have a plug-in that works with the browser, to copy the URL and direct a separate chemical-display program to it, or to download the file and open it with the chemical-display program. If a plug-in is available, then when the browser comes across a .mol file or the like, it automatically launches the plug-in and uses it to display the file within the browser. No special action by the user is required. The other methods, while workable, are a pain in the butt for the user.
Mac users currently have no browser plug-in that can display chemical structures in a MacOS X browser. Chime and the Chem3D plug-in both work well with Netscape 4.7 in MacOS 8 and 9, but neither works with MacOS X browsers. A free MacOS X plug-in version of MarvinView would be greeted with great relief in the Mac chemical community. It would also be a great marketing tool for you.
Plug-ins for MacOS X browsers such as Safari are written according to the standards developed by Netscape, which can be found at http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/plugin/index.htm and also http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/plugin-api.html. I know that plug-ins for Safari can be written because I use two by Schubert-IT: PDF Browser and Word Browser. (PDF Browser is a Safari plug-in that substitutes for Adobe Reader, which doesn't work as a plug-in with MacOS X browsers.) I believe plug-ins are written in C++, but I don't know much about it beyond that.
What do you think?
Journals such as JACS often have chemical structure files in their supporting information. The journals don't deliver applets to display the files, so the user needs either to have a plug-in that works with the browser, to copy the URL and direct a separate chemical-display program to it, or to download the file and open it with the chemical-display program. If a plug-in is available, then when the browser comes across a .mol file or the like, it automatically launches the plug-in and uses it to display the file within the browser. No special action by the user is required. The other methods, while workable, are a pain in the butt for the user.
Mac users currently have no browser plug-in that can display chemical structures in a MacOS X browser. Chime and the Chem3D plug-in both work well with Netscape 4.7 in MacOS 8 and 9, but neither works with MacOS X browsers. A free MacOS X plug-in version of MarvinView would be greeted with great relief in the Mac chemical community. It would also be a great marketing tool for you.
Plug-ins for MacOS X browsers such as Safari are written according to the standards developed by Netscape, which can be found at http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/plugin/index.htm and also http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/plugin-api.html. I know that plug-ins for Safari can be written because I use two by Schubert-IT: PDF Browser and Word Browser. (PDF Browser is a Safari plug-in that substitutes for Adobe Reader, which doesn't work as a plug-in with MacOS X browsers.) I believe plug-ins are written in C++, but I don't know much about it beyond that.
What do you think?