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Marcin Wojdyr edited this page Jun 26, 2020 · 16 revisions

Web-based molecular graphics programs

that you should use instead of UglyMol if you need pretty graphics or if you don't care about electron density

I haven't spent a lot of time with these program, so take my comments below with a grain of salt.

  • Mol* - new collaboration between authors of NGL and LiteMol (TypeScript),
  • NGL - rich UI and plenty of features, used on RCSB website,
  • 3Dmol - lightweight with well-documented API,
  • JSmol - JMol translated to JavaScript. Works with and without WebGL. The most popular viewer on the web.
  • Molmil - from PDBj. No dependencies.
  • LiteMol - announced by PDBe in 2016 (TypeScript).

Also worth knowing about:

  • GLmol - the first WebGL viewer (unless jolecule was the first one?), started in 2011, with experimental support for el. den. visualization. Many newer ones are based on it - iview, icn3d, partly 3Dmol,
  • pv - lightweight viewer started in 2013, stylish cartoons, no support for el. den.
  • Speck - specialized in ambient occlusion. Reads only XYZ format.
  • xtal.js - aimed at crystallographers, UglyMol was started as its fork.

And if you don't mind Java applets:

  • AstexViewer - good for viewing electron density,
  • JMol - one of the most popular desktop viewers works also as an applet.

Size comparison

Javascript assets are usually served minified and gzipped, so we only compare the minified-gzipped versions.

Note that all sizes are small comparing with sizes of electron density maps.

Project Net KB Major Dependencies Total KB
pv <45 gl-matrix 45
UglyMol ~50 ~50
Molmil 68 none? 68
3DMol 76 jquery 109
iCn3D 86 three, jquery ~200?
NGL ? three 253
LiteMol ? three, react, typescript >500?
JSmol 42+?* jquery *

* JSmol.min.nojq.js is only 42KB gzipped, but requires much bigger dynamically loaded resources.