In-browser plugin-free CIF visualization: comparison of open-source engines

This utility web-app bundles four available open-source pure-JavaScript engines for in-browser rendering of arbitrary crystallographic information files (CIF), for demonstration purposes:

• JSmol, part of Jmol (LGPL license)
• ChemDoodle Web Components library (GNU General Public License version 3)
• RasmolJS (derived from RasMol, licensed under GNU General Public License)
• Player.html (MIT license)

Some web-server is required to run the web-app (however no server-side rendering is assumed), e.g. in Python:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

or, alternatively, see online as GitHub Pages. Also a detailed blog post is available.