Collaborative active textbooks

This paper describes CAT, a Web-based algorithm animation system. CAT augments the expressive power of Web pages for publishing passive multimedia information with a full-fledged interactive algorithm animation system. It improves on previous Web-based algorithm animations by providing a framework that makes it easy to construct new animations, including those that involve multiple views. Because views of the same running algorithm may reside on different machines, CAT is particularly well-suited for electronic classrooms and remote learning environments. This strategy is an improvement over the electronic classroom systems we are aware of, which simply display the same X window on multiple machines and are only viable in local-area networks. We believe our framework generalizes to electronic textbooks in arbitrary domains. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.