Am I correct in asserting that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 is now compatible with plug-ins meant for Netscape Navigator? If so, could someone provide some pointers to how to incorporate MDL's Chime into IE 3.0?
Chime displays structures in IE 3.0 (which is only available for Windows 95 & NT) as long as you have "Enable ActiveX controls and plug-ins" checked on the "View" "Options" "Security" menu. However: - Plug-in support in Internet Explorer is incomplete. It doesn't support the EMBED tag option "type=", it doesn't support a plug-in executing a JScript command via a URL reference, and it doesn't support the LiveConnect capabilities of plug-ins. And JScript is a very buggy, incomplete version of Netscape's JavaScript. - I submitted a priority support request to Microsoft about the above problems and got the following responses: "After several e-mail threads, it was determined that we do not support usage of Netscape Plug-ins.. Called and left voice mail for customer." "Final resolution: We do not support the functionality the customer is requesting. I have verified that Program Management is aware of this and the answer remains, so the customer has been informed that all of his clients will not be able to use IE3.0 for their requested functionality." - Apparently, Microsoft's committment to plug-in support is less than encouraging. This is distressing for us, not because it would be hard to take our Chime plug-in and wrap it as an ActiveX control, rather: - Sites would need 2 sets of documents, one supporting the EMBED (plug-in) command and one supporting the OBJECT (ActiveX) command. - Sites would likely support two types of scripting, JavaScript and VBScript (JScript is too buggy and incomplete to use and most OLE/ ActiveX programmers would probably feel more comfortable in Visual Basic.) - Microsoft, in the 3 years we have been developing OLE controls, has never successfully ported OLE to the Macintosh (it performs so slowly it is unusable.) It is unlikely that ActiveX will become a cross- platform standard, which is fine for corporate Intranets bases solely on Windows machines, but doesn't work well in an Internet environment. This is going to be quite a problem in the chemical Internet community. Netscape and Microsoft are both very important providers of Internet technology; it is frustrating to see that the standards for embedding technology are deviating and that HTML documents, once mostly portable between all platforms and browsers, will start to depend on very specific object technology that users may not have. - Bryan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Bryan Van Vliet bryan@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 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)