You may have already encountered helper applications and plug-ins. In yesterday's materials, for example, we mentioned:
Helper Applications
A helper application is one to which you can link from within a web page, but when the reader clicks on the link, a separate application is launched on the person's machine.
The main advantage of a helper application is that it gives you access to the full functionality of that software. The main disadvantage is that it reqires the person to have yet another tool loaded on their machine. Another point to remember is that that it moves the reader's attention away from the brower and into a separate window, which may be good or bad, depending on the situation.
If you happen to have either Maple V or Mathematica loaded onto your machine, then you may want to check out a very small demonstration of linking to a helper app. I tried to make those as simple as possible, so that you could easily see the important features for setting yourself up to do the same sort of thing
If you want to see some more complex examples of helper-apps in the math curriculum, then here are two places you might want to consider (suggestions of other sites to include here are welcome from workshop participants):
Here are just a few of the programs (with links to the companies that own / sell them) that can be set up to run as helper apps. Many others can be used the same way, but I just tried to list a few well-known ones here:
Plug-Ins
A plug-in is a tool to which you can link from within a web page, and when the reader clicks on the link, a new software application is launched within the browser window the person was using.
The perceived advantage of a plug-in is that it extends the functionality of a browser without requiring you to go off into another window. The main disadvantage is that it reqires the person to have yet another tool loaded on their machine. One other point to remember is that plug-ins are, relatively speaking, a new approach, and companies have not yet figured out how to position these products.
As mentioned above, Techexplorer is one plug-in for PCs. As mentioned by one of your classmates in email, Math Browser is another plug-in, specifically "a 32-bit Windows application based on Mathcad version 5.0" [per Mathsoft's own literature].
One Last Lesson-Topic for Today
You may want to take a look at this comparison of several methods that Robert Miner and I put together for ICTCM (the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathmatics) last year. It takes several pages from the University of Minnesota Calculus Initiative and presents them using various methods: in HTML, image-based, PDF, dvi, and WebEQ formats.
Realize that you may not have all the tools installed at your site to properly examine all of those versions but don't worry: even that can be a learning experience, as you see what works for you and what does not.