iBabel started out as an AppleScript Studio application designed as a front-end to OpenBabel DOI, this was updated several times and is now an ApplescriptObjC application built with Xcode. As well as acting as a front-end to OpenBabel it also provided a front-end to tools built on OpenBabel and a molecule viewer using a selection of java applets and plugins via an embedded web view.

This all worked perfectly for a while but various security issues mean that java applets and plugins via an embedded web view no longer function, in addition calls to remote web servers to provide javascript viewers also cause security issues. In addition OpenBabel has been substantially rewritten so that many of the small programs built on OpenBabel are no longer supported. This functionality has not been lost however, they have now been incorporated into the main OpenBabel program. Security updates, Sandboxing and changes within El Capitan also meant I had to update a number of features.

Now things have settled down a bit I've restarted work on iBabel and an update is now available.

I've transitioned most of the calls to babel over to obabel the differences are highlighted here and replaced the calls to the tools based built on OpenBabel with the new corresponding calls to obabel.

Updating the viewers however has taken more time than I expected with new security features in Mac OSX updates causing unexpected issues. Whilst not yet complete, I have removed all the java or plugin-based molecular viewers and replaced them with javascript versions.

Full details are here.