The goal of our Web Labs is a toolbox that enables development of interactive web simulations or “labs,” and a set of labs built with this toolbox. Our development practice is as follows.

First, Get something up on the screen. Often this involves finding an example on the web and modifying it. Don’t spend a lot of time designing and thinking before something simple gets running. We believe that it is better to get something useful running than it is to have a beautiful plan and theory in development but nothing working to show for your time.

Second, repeat the following:

• Add functionality.
• As we observe repetition of code and see patterns developing, generalize the code. Have the objective of maximizing code in libraries and minimizing code needed to build new labs.
• As we observe patterns developing in the user interfaces, refine the design of a user interface guideline that is simple and consistent between labs in order to speed development of new labs and speed user comprehension when entering new labs.
• As we have time or run into problems 😛   read and learn about Javascript and CSS and design principles and try to incorporate better practices.

The most recent versions of the Javascript code are the first two labs listed at the Web Labs tab. The other experiments work but have code that was developed at an earlier stage of this software development process.