Flexibility of JavaScript controled simulations

The paper presents the advantages of using JavaScript functions in interaction with scriptable applets. The concept was tested on the JxyZET simulation applet which was developed as a platform-independent complement to xyZET. The latter is an authoring tool for the development and visualisation of various phenomena in physics. The original JxyZET was expanded with some scriptable functions. This permits the definition of more complex elastic bodies built from several hundreds or even thousands of particles and springs. These bodies can be easily modified just by changing some parameters within the JavaScript code included in the parent hypertext. The simulation of complex dynamic systems is investigated The introduction of libraries of reusable JavaScript functions was proposed. The usage of JavaScript permits the interaction of a user-defined algorithm with the simulation tool, in our case JxyZET. The concept of dynamically conditioned simulation runs is explained and the possibilities of dynamically restructured simulation models are demonstrated.