JSpecView is a general-purpose X-Y data viewer suitable for Web applications. The previous article in this series introduced JSpecView and discussed the importance of this kind of software in building rich, chemically-aware Web applications. This article will illustrate one way to set up the JSpecView build environment to easily enable extensions and modifications to be outlined in articles that will follow.

Like chemical structures, X-Y graphical data such as NMRs, chromatograms, mass spectra, and IRs are a ubiquitous and essential part of the language of chemistry. Although many software tools have been developed for sharing and manipulating X-Y data, few of them are suited for use on the Web. This article, the first in a series, introduces one X-Y data tool that can be used with the Web, JSpecView. Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten.

The Web is quickly becoming the only scientific publishing platform that matters. We’ve seen the dramatic changes that this kind of shift has caused in other industries; what does this shift mean for the future of scientific publishing? Jean-Claude Bradley’s talk, although not specifically providing the answer, offers a fascinating look at the kinds of problems that the successful scientific publishers of the future will need to solve.

Google Books has digitized a large number of older, hard-to-find chemistry journals. Given that the shelf-life of a chemistry experimental is measured in centuries, this may be a useful alternative to the traditional interlibrary loan. Although the user interface for Google Books should be an embarrassment to a company with Google’s resources and reputation, the content is indispensable.

The science blogging anthology The Open Laboratory 2007 is now available for purchase. As mentioned earlier, The Open Laboratory was created to promote the 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference to be held on January 19, 2008. Chapter 4.3 contains the article “SMILES and Aromaticity: Broken?”, which originally appeared last year on Depth-First. Details are available in the original announcement.

A 2D chemical structure editor is a key component in most cheminformatics systems. With an ever-increasing number of groups using the Web as a cheminformatics platform, the need for a structure editor built specifically around the capabilities and constraints of the Web becomes more apparent.

Eclipse is one of those great tools that is both easy to learn and extremely powerful. Eclipse’s power comes, in part, from the number of features it offers, which seems to grow with every new release. This creates a problem though; the more features that are added to Eclipse, the more difficult it is to find them. This article focuses on one feature that every Eclipse user should know about: Quick Fix.