The W2H interface brings access to more than hundred sophisticated bioinformatics programs. The tools (both licensed and non-licensed) run on the UNIX server and can be accessed from any platform supported by the Netscape Navigator.

The users knowing the Wisconsin Package Interface (WPI), a native X-based graphical interface from GCG group, will recognise very soon that the W2H interface was designed to be as much compatible with WPI as possible. On the other hand, the W2H interface supports also a classical usage without obligation of working with the sequence lists. Thus both sequence oriented and application oriented approaches are available.

But the implementation of W2H is quite different from WPI. Based completely on the httpd protocol and on the powerful WWW browser with JavaScript, it brings a real client-server architecture with all its advantages.

A typical scenario starts by choosing one or more sequences you want to perform some analysis on. Then you select or type the application you want to run. An application program window appears, displaying the selected sequences as input and allowing you to set the required and optional parameters before running the program. From the application window the program is started and the result window appears. Either you refresh the window by clicking a button, or you specify the client-pull method to poll a result buffer automatically.

The interface is quite complex covering besides executing the GCG analysis programs also features like sequence selector, search set builder, pattern chooser, access to the sequence databases, uploading client files to the GCG server or showing and manipulating the graphical outputs. Together it consists of more than 30 HTML frames plus, for each application, a specialised form with all mandatory and optional parameters is automatically generated.

For special environments, like workshops, conferences and company intranets, there is a special mode (Intranet mode) which can be easily set up and used without having the UNIX accounts for all users on the server side.

The main advantage of an HTML embedded language is that the whole user request is prepared on the client side without necessity to make the network round-trips. The JavaScript language is capable to verify user's inputs, to suggest the default values and to provide sufficient help. An entering a single value in a form can consequently produce the derived values and let them appear in other places not even in the same form, but also in a quite separate window. It makes the user interface much more powerful and user-friendly.

The W2H design has to take into consideration the security issues even more seriously because it enables an access to the server computer completely, of course only for registered users. The interface considers how to protect the server machine against the unauthorised users and how to protect the user data against a not-allowed access by other users.