Hierarchical Visualization in a Simulation-Based Educational Multimedia Web System

This paper presents a system that generates web documents (courses, presentations or articles) enriched with interactive simulations and other hypermedia elements. Simulations are described using an object oriented continuous simulation language called OOCSMP. This language is complemented by two higher language layers (SODA-1L and SODA-2L). SODA-1L describes pages or slides, while SODA-2L builds courses, articles or presentations. A compiler (C-OOL) has been programmed to generate Java applets for the simulation models and HTML pages for the document pages. The paper focus on some new capabilities added to OOCSMP to handle different graphic detail levels of the system being simulated. Different views are shown as cascade windows, whose multimedia elements can be arranged and synchronized with the simulation execution. The new capabilities have been tested by extending a previously developed course on