Re: [Jmol-users] A note about testing HTML code on Mac OS X systems

[Christopher M. <cj...@rc...>]

On Saturday, January 31, 2004, at 05:06 AM, timothy driscoll wrote:

>
> at 3.53p EDT on 2004 January 29 Thursday Christopher Masi said:
>
>> For other coding novices like me out there...
>>
>> When testing HTML code on OS X systems I noticed the following oddity.
>> When I think about it from a security perspective, it isn't actually
>> all that odd. Here goes...
>>
>> Here is the directory structure in /Users/myusername/sites/
>>
>> test
>>    test2
>>      cell457b.html (the original cell457b with codebase="../jmol")
>>      cell457b.pdb
>>    jmol
>>      JmolApplet.jar
>>
>> Here is the odd part. If cell457b.html is "dragged and dropped" onto a
>> browser (Mozilla 1.6, Safari 1.0.1, Camino 0.7, IE 5.2.2) the applet
>> will load, but the pdb file will not load. Camino et al. briefly 
>> report
>> a security exception in the status bar. However, if I use the included
>> Apache server to serve the files to myself
>> (http://127.0.0.1/~myusername/test/test2/cell457b.html) both the 
>> applet
>> and the pdb file load properly. If the html file, the pdb, and the
>> applet coexist in the same folder then both dragging and dropping and
>> loading via the loopback (correct term?) address work without a 
>> problem.
>>
>> So, if you want to test your files before uploading them to a server,
>> you will have to activate your Apache server.
>>
>
> you can always use the Open.. menu command (Cmd-O) to open your html 
> file,
> and it will work with relative url paths.  as easy as it is to activate
> apache on OS X, cmd-O is even faster!
>
> regards,
>
> :tim

Hi Tim,

Command+O behaves just like dragging and dropping. Command+O and 
dragging and dropping will work if the pdb file and the applet are both 
in the same directory. Apparently, the security exception is only an 
issue if the applet is in a different directory. In any even, I guess 
that the warning is command+o and dragging and dropping can behave 
differently than loading files from a web server.
   Another benefit of testing your site on your own server is if the 
site works when served from your own server and not from another 
server, then you can feel more confident that the problem is with the 
other server.
   I understand that starting your own web server can introduce security 
risks, for the end user's computer and for the network, and get your 
name added to your sys admin's list of least favorite people. So, 
people should check with their sys admin's before starting up their 
servers, additionally if you are concerned about security, you can 
start up the server for testing purposes and shut it down when you are 
done testing.

<cheeky monkey mode>
With my Apache server running, all I have to do is type 127 in the url 
field, and most browsers will give me a list of pages beginning with 
127 that I have recently visited and I can just select the destination 
I want.
</cheeky monkey mode>

Chris