Main Form

Figure 4.1: The Main form

The Main form is the main way to access other forms, load and save files, control trajectory playback, change various global program settings, access help, and to quit the program. Many of these actions can also be performed with the menu shortcut keys described in Table 4.3.

The Quit menu item exits VMD. This will bring up another form which verifies that you do indeed wish to exit. Press Yes to quit, or No to return to VMD.

Help

The Help menu item starts a web browser and displays on-line VMD help documents. The browser is designated by the environment variable VMDHTMLVIEWER. Selecting help multiple times may start multiple browsers. The default web browser is Netscape for Unix systems, and the built-in Explorer shell for Windows systems. In some cases you may need to have a web browser up and running before successfully using the Help button, since they each behave a bit differently. If you obtain a message such as ``netscape: not running on display :0.0'', then you will have to start up the browser yourself, after which VMD should be able to direct the browser to the correct page. The help button brings up the VMD Quick Help page, which contains links to the current User's Guide, FAQ, and links to various helpful information and programs.