The recent availability of source code for Netscape Navigator; http://www.mozilla.org/download.html raises some interesting issues. In theory, anyone can take this code, add say an interesting chemical functionality and do with it what they wish. Hitherto, the way chemical functionality has been added to Netscape is via plug-ins (MDL and Cambridgesoft offer these; are there others?) or Java, both of which are highly modular. Now, it seems there will be a third way, ie directly via the source code. Compiling this is non trivial (it can take several hours) so I do not expect a rush. Coordination of this effort is the mission statement of http://www.mozilla.org/mission.html Still, presumably one can ignore them, and in any case, I doubt they would be much interested in a niche subject such as chemistry. so are we headed for a diaspora of "slightly modifed" chemical browsers, any one of which might be needed to view a specific site? Is anyone out there prepared to state that they are working on chemical versions of Netscape? In any case, many feel that a simple HTML browser, or indeed a chemically modified browser, either via plugins or direct, is on its way out already. Perhaps within a yaer or so, we will all be using XML instead. Of course, XML is not a language, more of a specification for how to implement extensible subject specific syntax. So there will never be such a thing as an XML browser. There is of course a chemical implementation of XML in CML, from Peter Murray-Rust, along with a set of Java classes which map it, ie a CML browser currently exists, using e.g Netscape merely as a virtual Java engine. But CML need not be the only XML implementation of chemistry, and whilst hopefully the chemical community will gravitate towards one systematic way of viewing chemistry on the Web, it is not guarranteed. so, as Yogi Berra might have said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it! Lets all hope we can decide to take the same fork. End of Soap box! Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)