viewing PDB-files in MS Internet Explorer

[Bryan Van Vliet]

Chime will install into the plugins directory of Internet Explorer and will
render structures (at least for Internet Explorer 3.0 on Windows 95 and NT.)
The installer for Chime 1.0 will allow you to install in a plugins directory
other than the one for Netscape Navigator. 

Chime scripting will not work in Internet Explorer, which means that you will
not be able to run some of the interesting Chime tutorials that are available
on the Web. This is because Internet Explorer doesn't support all of the 
capabilities of Netscape plug-ins, including executing a JavaScript command
from a plug-in. This also means that you will not be able to access Chemscape
Server from Internet Explorer.

We do have a prototype of Chime Pro with an ActiveX wrapper around it. We are
planning to provide this to corporate users who wish to use Chemscape Server
from Internet Explorer in a corporate Intranet. Currently, we have no plans to
provide an ActiveX version of basic Chime for the Internet. As soon as we did
that, every Chime tutorial creator would have to support 2 kinds of embedding
technology. For example, in Internet Explorer, rather than supporting the
<EMBED> tag, you must create a Chime Control object and use properties instead
of <EMBED> tag options to control Chime:

   ChimeCtl.src = "my.pdb"
   ChimeCtl.display3d = "ball&stick"

To insert a Chime/ActiveX object, you have to use the ActiveX Control Pad which
inserts the proper reference to the Chime/ActiveX control (and sticks a really
nasty >40 character ActiveX control identification string into your HTML page.)
If we were to release Chime/ActiveX to the Internet, Chime tutorial writers 
would have to support 2 sets of scripts, one for ActiveX and one for the
plug-ins version.

It would really be great if Microsoft completely supported Netscape plug-ins so
the chemical community wasn't faced with a lot of work. Plug-ins basically work
well in Internet Explorer, Microsoft just needs to complete support of a few
items (like type="" as an EMBED tag option and the ability to reference a 
javascript: URL.) I don't think that 2 types of embedding technology on the
Internet is the solution.

Thanks,

Bryan





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| Bryan Van Vliet                                       bryan at mdli.com |
| Project Manager, Internet Technologies    510.895.1313 x1160 (Voice) |
| MDL Information Systems, Inc.                     510.352.2870 (Fax) |
| 14600 Catalina Street, San Leandro, CA 94577     http://www.mdli.com |
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