Edited by Steven M. Bachrach
Published by ACS Books, 1996.
This document contains updates to information contained in this book in chapters 6 and
12. It does not relate to other chapters. For the
original citation, consult the page number indicated.
This page
© H. S. Rzepa. Updated April 13, 1996.
Chapter 6: The World Wide Web
- p 110. HTML 3.0, perhaps not surprisingly, did not emerge in 1195, and
is unlikely to in 1996, having proved too complex to try to ratify on so
short a timescale. The W3O (the organisation behind its development) has
set up a number of working parties looking at various aspects, and it is hoped these
will all eventually coalesce into HTML 3.0. Meanwhile, pressure from Netscape,
Microsoft and other developers to introduce "multimedia" and non-standard
extensions
means that that are now may flavours of HTML in circulations, some of which
follow the SGML guidelines more closely than others.
- p 114: Sources of programs for use with the World Wide Web. There are a number of
good collections. Click here to view one collection.
- p 118. The W3O has made a strong push recently to separate "style"
and "content", which had gotten rather interleaved with some of the most recent
non-standard extensions. The world still awaits a browser (other than
Arena) which implements such style sheets.
- p 121. As an example of how hierarchical "caching" might work, the UK
has set up a national caching service;
http://www.hensa.ac.uk, along with support
for an automatic proxy configuration file. This latter is achieved by
entering http://www.hensa.ac.uk/proxy.config in the Proxy configuration
section of e.g. a Netscape browser. This allows for example all document
requests outside the UK to be routed through one or more specified national
caching servers, whilst document request within the UK can be resolved either
directly, or via an intermediate cache.
- p 125. The form described is shown below, and allows users to "vote"
for their choice of best chemistry Web pages.
- p 126. Several new and very powerful global index services have
started. Alta Vista offers
other advanced searches, including a "citation" search, which allows the user
to find all pages containing a hyperlink to a give URL.
- p 147. The mechanism for mapping an image relied on a remote server
to "resolve" the map. The introduction of "local image maps"
in Netscape, Internet Explorer and other browsers, seems likely to
replace remote maps quickly. Examples of the use of such maps can
be found on
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/ectoc/papers/01/
Chapter 12: Chemistry and the World Wide Web
p 264. Try out the following examples of "hyperactive molecules" using
MIME techniques. Note that the "GIF" images have been created as "animation"
files, which contain multiple frames, and instructions on how to display them
on the screen. A browser such as Netscape 2.0 will display the animation.
p 264. An alternative way to present a 3D molecular image is
using "Virtual Reality Modeling Language";
| Dimethyl Sulfate
|
|---|
|
p 267. A third, and increasingly popular mechanism for presenting a custom
user interface via the Web is the Java language;
Custom Software produced for use on WWW by commercial developers is beginning to appear.
Java Sketch and Fetch Molecule Builder from Tripos
Netscape Chemscape Chime plug-in from MDLI.
I would be happy to hear of other commercial products which make use of Web
technologies.
Feedback
If you have any corrections or additions to material noted in the chapter,
please contact Henry Rzepa by e-mail.
If you know of a good chemistry site, you may wish to "vote" by filling out
the form below.
