dsh-file-explorer-preview-molstar

When browsing protein structure or small-molecule files in dsh-file-explorer, the preview panel used to show only raw text. A PDB or mmCIF file with thousands of lines is nearly impossible to interpret as a spatial conformation. This plugin injects Mol* WebGL rendering directly into that panel: select a .cif, .pdb, or .sdf file and an interactive, rotatable 3D model appears in place of the plain text.

The viewer ships with Cartoon, Ball & Stick, and Molecular Surface representation presets, chain- or entity-based coloring, an auto-spin toggle, and a one-click camera reset. The background follows DSHs dark and light theme automatically. A status bar reports the file format badge plus atom, residue, and chain counts, and all toolbar and status copy is localized in English and Chinese. For text files over 2 MiB and binary .bcif files, the plugin fetches raw bytes through the core readRawFile service, so no external tool is needed. On dsh-file-explorer v0.9.0 and later it registers as a named viewer labeled Mol* Structure, giving the Open with menu and the panel switcher a proper name instead of the generic Extension viewer.

The plugin is aimed at structural biologists, computational chemists, and drug-discovery researchers who want a fast, in-browser way to inspect fold topology, binding pockets, or molecular geometry without launching heavyweight desktop applications such as Jmol or Chimera. It is a read-only, lightweight preview layer: no editing, no export. It slots naturally into your file-management workflow and lets you get a 3D sense of a structure with a single click.