(We Are) Squares
by Clare Bates Congdon and Benjamin Guyre Congdon-Jones

These exercises began while working with independent study students in the Fall of 1999 and in January 2000. My five-year-old son, Ben, was enchanted with the squares, and he and I became collaborators on several of the pieces. Ben gives the direction, and I do the programming. :-)

These were developed using Netscape on a Mac, using "cross-browser" libraries originally from BrainJar, and extended at Colby. Alas, the cross-browser libraries are not fully cross-browser. Most of these exercises also work with IE on a Mac. They might or might not work with the Windows version of either browser. Most of them work with Netscape on a Linux box, but the fonts are screwy and the Ben's squares (numbers 2, 4, and 5 below) chew CPU, so I must've done something wrong.

1. Colored Squares This is an exercise in making the squares look transparent when they overlap.

2. Ben's Growing Squares The squares grow or shrink each time they hit an edge.

3. Colby Computer Science in 5k This was an entry into a "5k" web design contest.

4. Ben's Squares Ben's direction on how to work with moving squares.

5. Ben's Squares, version 2 A second version of this.

6. Ben's Soccer Game The orange and yellow players move toward the ball and "kick" it. (Netscape on a Mac only.)