MapleNet 10 – great promise, but who’s got time?
Maple have released an interesting add-on which is supposed to provide “interactive math over the Web”.
MapleNet works by creating a document using Maple 10 and then embedding it within an HTML page and publishing it on a MapleNet server. This gives java applets that the user can interact with by changing parameters. The resulting screenshots look similar to the LiveMath interactive documents that I use on Interactive Mathematics.
When I went to try one of the demos, it began loading the java applets and after a few minutes I got sick of waiting and started to write this post. Then it froze up my browser (Firefox). I tried again using that other browser (IE) and this time it asked me if I wanted to install some component. I agreed, the applet indicated that it loaded fully, but nothing appeared for a long time. Eventually I could see the graphs and could change parameters.
You can try it yourself here: http://maplenet.maplesoft.com/.
While LiveMath doesn’t have the flexibility of this MapleNet, file sizes are smaller and it is less clunky. But Maple is huge, so I guess this product will become more mainstream. Can’t say I am impressed so far…
Stop press The second demo I tried to access using IE froze the browser. Hmmm – I’m even less impressed.
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