Keywords: JavaScript, engineering computational utilities, client-side computation, web-based utilities, purpose-built engineering software..

In this paper we discuss a client-side engineering computation model that uses HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and JavaScript, an object-oriented, clientside scripting language (but not a form of the Java language), to obtain numerical solutions to typical simple and not-so-simple engineering problems. Here HTML is used to supply a web page FORM for entry of the input data and also for display of the computed results. JavaScript is used to perform the computations by employing application specific JavaScript code that has been included in the web page for the task at hand. The advantage of using JavaScript in a web page over other methods is that the Virtual Machine or Just In Time compiler that interprets and executes the code on the fly is a built-in part of all widely used contemporary web browsers such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

Here we review the process described above and offer a menu system together with examples implemented in a format that employs a separate window for each computational element, e.g., area properties, beam frequencies, etc. This format provides the following advantages: 1) only those modules required for the task at hand need be downloaded and opened, 2) one can interchange data between modules or other data sources by sharing and transfer, 3) since each module is a web page, it can be printed locally and saved locally for complete project documentation and finally and perhaps most importantly, 4) a suitably designed template module is suggested that can be used to facilitate an open-source, user-supported engineering computational resource library.

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