Displaying Chemical Structures in Webpages
To get the most from this
site you should configure your browser to use the Chime plug-in from Molecular Design. This allows you to display LIVE three
dimensional molecules which you can rotate and display in a wide
variety of formats. Click on the icon below to
go to the MDL Chime page to download the plug in. There is ample
information on the site to get you up and running. When you have
installed the plug in come back to this site and check that you can see
the Caffiene molecule below:
The image on the left is Capsaicin, the active
ingredient of Chilli Peppers. It is an animated .GIF file which is one
way of displaying 3D molecules. This method is limited in that you
cannot interact with the image. How to install the MDL plug
in:
System Requirements
If all is wll you will be able to use the mouse to rotate the molecule. Right Click for display options.
Great! Now you are ready for the rest of the site: Return to Index
Alternative ways of displaying 3D molecules: Click on this link to see Beta-Cyclodextrin as a VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) file betacyclodextrin
The latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator contain support for VRML. If you are using earlier versions you may need to install a plugin such as "CosmoPlayer" from SGI.
Jmol project provides an open source equivalent of Chime. You can find out more here Jmol (Note that the current download is a 'gzipped' 'tar' file and is incorrectly named tar.tar, if you change it to tar.gz it should unzip OK) And here is the link on how to use it Jmol JavaScript Library
For an in-depth report on molecular structures in Webpages please see this article by Paul May
There is also an ActiveX .mol file viewer called 'ChemView' available at http://www.hyleos.net/
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