Skip to main content
Search IntMath
Close

450+ Math Lessons written by Math Professors and Teachers

5 Million+ Students Helped Each Year

1200+ Articles Written by Math Educators and Enthusiasts

Simplifying and Teaching Math for Over 23 Years

Tips, tricks, lessons, and tutoring to help reduce test anxiety and move to the top of the class.

MapleNet 10 - great promise, but who’s got time?

By Murray Bourne, 24 Jul 2005

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://www.maplesoft.com/products/maplenet/. [Currently it's version 15.]

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.

See the 2 Comments below.

2 Comments on “MapleNet 10 - great promise, but who’s got time?”

  1. user says:

    Take a look at webMathematica instead. Same idea, but no Java applet required. Just standard HTML.

  2. Murray says:

    Hi "user". Yah, I already discovered Mathematica player. It is better than MapleNet.

Leave a comment




Comment Preview

HTML: You can use simple tags like <b>, <a href="...">, etc.

To enter math, you can can either:

  1. Use simple calculator-like input in the following format (surround your math in backticks, or qq on tablet or phone):
    `a^2 = sqrt(b^2 + c^2)`
    (See more on ASCIIMath syntax); or
  2. Use simple LaTeX in the following format. Surround your math with \( and \).
    \( \int g dx = \sqrt{\frac{a}{b}} \)
    (This is standard simple LaTeX.)

NOTE: You can mix both types of math entry in your comment.

top

Tips, tricks, lessons, and tutoring to help reduce test anxiety and move to the top of the class.