Getting started with WebCAS is simple if you are running the right browser. So far, this only work with Firefox 1.5 or higher. Read below for reasons. To install firefox, visit getfirefox.com.
Select one of the tools from the right column. Each of these is self-contained. To get help about each tool, a help link is available in the upper right hand corner. Some tools are not yet ready and are listed but no link is available.
You may need to install some additional fonts to use. Most of the tools will work fine, however you may see an error to install fonts. I would recommend ignoring the error, but if mathematics does not look write you will need to install additional fonts. Visit Mozilla's mathml font installer to install the proper fonts. Depending on your platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), there are different installation methods. Each is listed in the right column on that page. Click here to test your fonts.
WebCAS is a proof of concept about Computer Algebra Systems and the web-standards technologies of XHTML/Javascript/MathML. A Computer Algebra System is a program that performs algebraic manipulation of mathematical functions and variables.
I helped design a system of mathematical plotters written in Java at the University of Colorado at Boulder, called the Mathematical Visualization Toolkit. I helped write many of the underlying code for the MVT, and the basic mathematical object structure is similar in both.
With the release of Firefox 1.5, a major browser integrated MathML, an xml-based storage of mathematical content. See the World Wide Web Consortium for more details on MathML and the Mozilla MathML website for more information about MathML in the Firefox browser.
The intention of these pages or tools is to aid in the understanding of mathematics. I am a teacher first, and a computer geek second and that is intentional. What this means is that I have built a useful set of pages that help students (as well as myself) go through many of the steps it takes for ...
I am not trying to recreate Mathematica, Maple or Matlab. These are all wonderful tools that I have used at different times in my career. They are great at being all-purpose tools for solving a large diversity of mathematical problems. WebCAS is a teaching tool, and at their heart, none of these software packages are teaching tools.