Online Scientific Calculator ZENO-5000: User Manual

Online Scientific Calculator ZENO-5000

Online calculators are extremely powerful tools, currently complementing and even replacing their hardware counterparts. Constantly increasing popularity of the online calculators is tightly correlated with proliferation and sophistication of mobile computational platforms, in particular, smart phones (like Apple iPhone™, Google Android™ based ones, variety of Blackberry™ devices from RIM and recently released Windows Phone 7), tablet PC, netbooks. Online calculators could also benefit more traditional desktop PC/Notebooks with Internet connectivity, enhancing their existing productivity tools.

Core functionality

Traditional scientific calculators (excluding the programming and graphing ones) could perform three basic types of mathematical operations, classified as following:

Data Entry operations: in simple words that means clicking on any numeric key, or just entering the constant values, like number pi, e, square root of 2, etc.
Unary operations: these to be performed directly on the content of the input box, like inverse function 1/x, or trigonometric sin(x).
Binary operations to be performed on the pair of numeric values: one of them stored in the internal memory register called “stack” and the second number shown in the input box. This type include all four arithmetic operations, exponent calculation (y^x, which stands for “y power x”) and percent calculation

Memory operations are implemented in practically every modern calculator. This convenient feature allows the intermediate results to be stored in internal memory register for later use. In brief, memory operations include the following:
•    Move/Copy the content of the input box to the memory (use down arrow key)
•    Move/Copy the content of the memory to the input box (use up arrow key)
•    Clear Memory: click on the memory box (just below the input box) to clear the content
•    Add to Memory (use the key labeled as M+)
•    Subtract from Memory (use the key labeled as M-)

Description

Online Scientific Calculator ZENO-5000 (hereinafter – ZENO) is implemented as rich internet application, utilizing the latest features presented in emerging Internet standards (HTML5/CSS3) and client-side scripting (jQuery/Javascript). It could run in major web browsers in either online, or offline modes: to utilize the latter, application files must be downloaded and stored on the client’s computer (for the details please refer to the SDK [3]).

Calculator ZENO contains the following screen elements (virtual controls), shown in the Fig.1:

Navigation Buttons located right under the title:

Home button linked to the index (home) page of the hosting web site
Manual button linked to the online User Manual
Documentation button linked to the online Development Notes

To the right of navigation buttons:

Stack (internal memory register) visualization button marked with “R”: on mouse hover event it will pop-up the tooltip showing the content of the stack
Keypad expansion button marked with small downward rectangle: on click it will toggle the additional keys on/off

The next row contains:

Input box, showing the numeric data entry (in this particular screen shot it shows the first 15 digits of number PI)

The next row contains:

Memory Register, which looks like an input box (in this particular screen shot it displays the first 15 digits of the square root of 2)
Memory data exchange buttons marked with Down/Up arrows

The keypad with expandable/collapsible area contains

Numeric keys and constant keys (data entry keys): Buttons marked with numbers 0…9 and “dot” sign; Buttons linked to popular constants: PI, PI/2, PI/3, PI/4, PI/6, e, 1/e, sqrt(2), sqrt(3), cubic root of 2, natural logarithm of 10, logarithm-base-10 of e, and “sigmas” (defects probability)
Function Keys linked to Unary operations: sign (+/-), inverse function 1/x, algebraic functions (1+x) and (1-x), square and square root, exponential function e^x, natural logarithm ln(x) and base-10-logaritm lg(x), trigonometric functions, direct and inverse (sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, sec, cosec) and corresponding hyperbolic functions: (sinh, cosh, tanh, sech, csch)
Binary Key operations: all 4 arithmetic operations (+, -, *, /), power function x power y, and percent %

Practical examples

Example 1. Calculate the arithmetic expression: 243.4+345*98.1:

Notice, that because of the multiplication taking precedence, the expression could be re-written as: 345*98.1+243.3
Enter the first number 345 using the "virtual" on-screen numeric keypad *
Click on "x" button, then enter the number 98.1 and click on the "=" button to get the intermediate result (33844.5)
Click the "+" button, enter 243.4 and click the "=" button to get the final result (34087.9)

Example 2. Calculate the 25% of 150

Enter the number 150 using the "virtual" on-screen numeric keypad *
Click on the multiplication button “x”
Enter the number: 25
Click on “%” (instead of "=") button to get the final result of: 37.5

Example 3. Calculate the value of 150 increased by 25%

Enter the number 150 using the "virtual" on-screen numeric keypad *
Click on the addition operation “+”
Enter the number: 25
Click on “%” (instead of "=") button to get the final result of: 187.5

* Note: use the computer mouse on a regular PC/Notebook, or touch-screen operation, available in the most of mobile platforms like iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, etc.

In case you made a mistake, use the backspace button ⇦ or clear the entire input box using "C" button, or “All Clear” (AC) button. For more complex computations use the "⇧" and "⇩" keys to move the numbers in input box to/from the memory register.

Web Browsers compatibility

Scientific Calculator was tested and found fully compatible with following major Web Browsers:

Mozilla Firefox, v.3.6.12 and higher
Google Chrome, v. 7.0 and higher
Apple Safari™, including the mobile version included in iPod Touch™, 3g

ZENO-5000 could also run in Internet Explorer 8.0, though the major graphic enhancements pertinent to HTML 5/CSS 3 will not be rendered properly. The full compatibility mode is expected in recently released by Microsoft IE 9 (still in Beta stage at the time of this article published), which expected to support HTML 5/CSS3 core features. The application is also working on Windows Phone 7.

Afterword

The Online Scientific Calculator ZENO-5000 (or simply ZENO) was started as an educational project, intended to demonstrate the power of emerging Internet standards and, namely: HTML 5 and CSS 3, accompanied by increasingly popular jQuery (extension to JavaScript). ZENO is implemented as rich internet application (RIA) with extremely small digital footprint. Though intended primarily for the didactic purpose, it could be well suited and customized for many practical computational tasks.

References

Disclaimer. The content of this article and external links, including the applications, graphic and textual materials, are provided on ‘AS IS’ basis for demonstration/educational purpose only without warranty of any kind. Commercial use of the calculator ZENO-5000 is strictly prohibited.