Web Control of VMD

A normal web browser can be used to control VMD, allowing presentations and demonstrations to be put online, so that others can view them. These pages describe what you need to do to view and create VMD-enabled web pages. If have any questions beyond what is explained here, please send email to vmd@ks.uiuc.edu.

Viewing VMD-enabled web pages

To view the demos, you need to download and install VMD. For Microsoft Windows, you need to be using VMD version 1.7.1 or later. Next, configure your browser to use VMD.

Now you may view a demo.

Creating VMD-enabled web pages

  1. Download the files used to create the demo page from demo.zip or demo.tgz.
  2. Unpack these files in the directory where you want to create your web page. Here's what you get:

    one_glpf.pdb Example PDB file.
    glpf.png Image of the system.
    index.html The web page.
    main.html Text of the presentation.
    control.vmd VMD script that controls the presentation.
    blankcmd.html File that initially occupies the command frame.
    .htaccess Included for users of the Apache web server. If you are using a different web server, you will need to assign the MIME type chemical/x-vmd to .vmd files.
  3. Finally, modify main.html and the commands at the end of control.vmd to create your presentation. Following the example, create a procedure for every needed command. You can then write a link to the command as <a href="http://127.0.0.1:2000/proc" target="invisible">, where proc is replaced by the procedure you want to call.