Firefox 4.0 has some improvements, but also some serious problems vis a vis Jmol on Macs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are my observations with Firefox 4.0 on Mac OS 10.5.8 "Leopard" (no snow), with Apple java 1.5.0_28. I DO NOT HAVE A SNOW LEOPARD (OS 10.6) SYSTEM and would appreciate hearing about the issues below from a Snow Leopard user. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TEXT ZOOM View, Zoom no longer causes Jmol to be wrong-sized. This old problem is fixed. I prefer to check "Zoom Text Only" because I like larger than default text, but I don't need Jmol to be larger than life. APPLET FOCUS BORDER Good: a new dotted line appears around Jmol when it has focus. (This does not appear in Safari.) CURSOR FAILS TO CHANGE IN APPLET The cursor no longer changes in the applet: placing the cursor at the right margin of Jmol (for zooming) fails to change it, as does holding the Shift key down for zooming. The cursor changes still work in Safari. APPLET MENU PROBLEM Serious problem with Jmol's menu: when you move the mouse outside the boundaries of Jmol, the menu closes. This precludes using most of the menu when it is raised by clicking on the "Jmol" frank. RIGHT CLICK: MENU OFTEN FAILS IN JMOL 11.8 I have intermittant problems raising Jmol's menu with right click in Jmol 11.8 (still used in FirstGlance and in Proteopedia). Right click never works from the upper left corner of Jmol. This means that it is rather challenging to open the Console or see "About Jmol"! But right click works reliably in Jmol 12.1.41, even in the upper left corner. RAISING APPLET TITLE BAR Under the right conditions, pressing the Cmd key raises a title bar above Jmol. (Thanks to Jaim Prilusky for discovering this.) The only feature I have found this title bar to have is that you can drag Jmol with it, detaching Jmol from the Firefox 4.0 window. This leaves the original Jmol rectangle blank. If you close the detached Jmol window, the molecule reappears in the original rectangle within the Firefox window. Even when detached, all scripts sent to Jmol from the Firefox window via javascript still work! In order to raise the title bar at the top of the applet, I must first click outside, then inside Jmol, then press Cmd. This works only once. For a second go, you again must click outside, then inside again. Further, as soon as you move the mouse, the bar disappears. So, to use the title bar, I must pay attention to have my mouse very close to the top of Jmol when I press Cmd. Then I can move the mouse into the title bar, click and drag Jmol. The title bar seems to be a feature of Firefox 4's interaction with java. I could not find any documentation for this online. In Safari, there is no title bar, and no applet focus border. There appears to be no title bar in Windows in Firefox 4 (see below). JMOL OUTSIDE BROWSER WINDOW Moving Jmol outside the browser window (with the title bar) means you can scroll the text without pushing Jmol out of view. Another use is that you can have two FirstGlance in Jmol sessions, detach the Jmol from one, and move it for a side by side comparison with the other Jmol. Both sessions retain control of their Jmols. MENU WORKS BETTER WITH DETACHED JMOL Detaching Jmol has a big advantage for using the Menu: now you can move the mouse outside of Jmol and the menu remains usable. This works regardless of whether the detached Jmol is inside the Firefox window, or outside it. BLANKING BETWEEN SCENES IS ALMOST GONE! If Firefox 3.6.15 (and all earlier versions), changing the scene in FirstGlance caused Jmol to go blank white before the new scene appears. This was very annoying. Also, double clicking to measure distances often failed, and often temporarily froze Jmol. (FirstGlance is using Jmol 11.8.22; Proteopedia, 11.8.24.) In Proteopedia, the 'toggle spin' and 'toggle quality' buttons cause blank white flashes. Also, when you scroll the page (and Jmol moves with the page), Jmol blanks white until you stop scrolling. None of these problems happened in Safari. In Firefox 4.0, almost all the blank flashes are gone! Except that I do get a white flash (in Jmol 11.8) or a black flash (in Jmol 12.1.41) when changing focus from Jmol to outside Jmol and vice versa. This is pretty minor. Also measuring distances now works reliably in FirstGlance! ------------ WINDOWS XP ------------ In Windows XP (with current java 1.6.0_24), in Firefox 4.0, right click raises Jmol's menu reliably from anywhere in Jmol even in Jmol 11.8, and moving outside Jmol does NOT close the menu prematurely. I could not find any key (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Windows) or any pair of keys that raises the applet title bar seen in Firefox (but not seen in Safari) on the Mac OS 10.5.8. This was true both in virtual WinXP in Parallels on the Mac, and in a real WinXP computer. -Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
