Introduction


The purpose of this project
This Meng project is intended to help students understand the concept of explicit polygon lists, which is taught at the beginning of Computer Graphics course(CS 417). An introductory learning tool is developed for this purpose. The tool is made as an applet, which enables students to access to the tool with Java-capable browser.

Acquisition of Java related skills is another goal of this project. As you can see below, Java has many advantages and is becoming a de facto standard in the network environment. At least, it is a good exercise in O-O programming.

Applet advantages
Providing instructional material as an applet has two major advantages.

  1. A Java applet can be linked from class Web pages, which realizes a more integrated tutorial for students.

  2. A Java applet can be accessed from various platforms by way of network, which allow students easier access to the material.

Java advantages
Java is an improved object oriented language, which is largely based on C++. With this property, developers can create flexible, well-modulared, reusable and high quality codes.

In addition to this basic property, Java already has well defined utility classes including java.awt (Java Abstract Windowing Toolkit) and java.net(network support), which were very useful in this project.