Through a collaboration with Google, the Huang lab at UST Hong Kong, and the Pande Lab at Stanford University, we’ve been working on a new way to run Folding@home –– through the browser. The primary goal here is to make folding much easier to run, especially for non-expert computer users.

Open beta. We are happy to announce that we now ready to release a first open beta test of the web client. It uses Google’s Native Client (aka NaCl) technology, allowing one to run Folding@home in a browser.

If you’re curious to check it out, you can go to the FAH Chrome Store link. Note that this only runs in Chrome (minimum version 31). For support questions, we have created a new subforum at foldingforum.org.

Requirements. In order to use the Folding App, you need to cover these three basic requirements:

1) Use the Chrome Browser (Details) in Windows, Linux, or MacOS-X

2) Install the Folding App from the Chrome Web Store (Details)

3) Launch the Folding App and you are now folding!

Please note that there are some additional options which you can use to enhance your Folding experience:

1) You may configure the Folding App with a username (Details), Team number (Details) and a passkey (Details) though none of these are required. Please note that passkey is needed if you want to earn additional points for successfully finishing the Work Unit (WU) quickly.

2) If you don’t want to install the Folding App, you can always use the direct link in any Chrome Browser installed on Windows, Linux and OSX (Details).

Open source. This is the first F@H Client that is fully open sourced. The F@H Native Client (NaCl) uses a new Assignment Server (AS) and a new version of the Work Server (WS) which exposes a JSON interface with additional security for third party developers. The folding is done on a Gromacs (version 4.6.5) based FahCore which is closed-source for security reasons. Third party developers are encouraged to participate in the development (Details) and users can also keep track of open issues (Details). Developers can view the log file generated from NaCl by choosing the console view from the DevTools Window.

Next steps. Finally, as many will probably notice, this opens the door to naturally moving Folding@home from the browser on a computer to a browser on a phone or tablet. We are actively investigating those possibilities.

Some links to additional related material:

Folding App Source Code: Details

Folding App FAQs: Details

Third Party Forum: Details

Folding@Home Homepage: Details

Chrome DevTools: Details