What is H.urna?

H.urna is a free web-based platform for understanding and teaching science at any age. It is articulated around interactives animations and visualizers allowing to see algorithms, data structures, maths, physics... Anywhere there is code or symbols that need understanding.

The main idea is that everyone can learn anything and that everything may be learned. H.urna delivers science insights to every one in a fun, creative and interactive way. By revealing the mechanics behind ‘complex’ computation, it helps to understand oneself, at its own pace and discover many other things.

What can I do with?

H.urna is not just a pre-made visualizations website, but a way of creating your alternatives to understand every aspect of concepts and sharing them with others.

Some examples you could use H.urna for:
- Reveal what is inside the black box of an algorithm.
- Create mazes, fractals, animations etc.
- Test processes using your data.
- Access to lessons on the platform and get more-in-depth with our Academy.
- Access to the open source C++ code library implementing standard algorithms.
- Ask a question and share knowledge with the Community.
- ...

H.urna is not a finished project ; Michael Jeulin-L is still actively improving it. If you spot a bug in our platform or if you want to request new features, please contact us.

What are the requirements?

Material: Nothing to download, install or upgrade, go to the platform with a relatively recent web browser.

Knowledge: There is no supposed knowledge required to use H.urna. You can get started by watching the introduction tour video.

Depending on the module and visualizers used, you may need further information: for more detailed documentation and lessons on algorithms/concepts/visualizers, please follow our Academy or ask the Community.

How much does it cost? Do I need a license?

H.urna basics are and always will be free of charge. It relies on an association that promotes education everywhere; you do not need any license to use H.urna basics in your school, home, or anywhere else. If you like it, please share H.urna to anyone that can help or interest.

The development, hosting, maintenance of H.urna is unfortunately nontrivial and not free. Therefore, people looking to participate are very welcome ; If you would like to contribute to, check out our 'How You May Participate'section.

May I use screenshots and videos screens?

Yes, if you take contents, screenshots and videos cast from this website, you can use them elsewhere as long as you cite the URL of H.urna (https://hurna.io).

You are very welcome to use as you please this website directly and share H.urna to anyone that can help or interest.

What is next?

The platform and community is still under construction and there are a number of obvious enhancements H.urna is looking forward to being developed. Here, in no particular order, is a list of some of the future enhancement planed.

- Add new modules, e.g.: Simple Equation solver (Maths for young), fractals generators, physic trajectories and simple differential equations (Physics for young).
- Support for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization.
- A community to create modules, handle preferences and help each other.
- Export animations and images (gif, jpg, mp3, png, svg).
- Add internationalization/translations.
- Include a JS editor for developers and a Blockly style editor for the young learners.
- Step by Step courses using blockly for learning concepts.
- Release clean API for the JS visualizers library.
- Release clean API for the C++ logger library.
- etc.

Let us know via the contact page what you would prefer or suggest for future versions.

Whether it is about translating, donating or any other kind, it is essential to build and nurture a community belonging to the participants and the users. H.urna is all about transparency and access to all: participating is always an important matter.

Bug reports, Feature requests, Feedbacks and Suggestions

We love feedback and feature suggestions, particularly when they are constructive and backed up by experience. Each suggestion shared with H.urna is saved and taking into account recognizing you as a critical participant.

Feature requests and suggestions are a big part of how we come to understand what the community’s needs. Because your voice is important to us: our goal is to put the community voice into the development process to help us think about and prioritize features.

If your action is about the C++ Hurna library, Please visit the open source GIT page. Otherwise, please email us at support@hurna.io or use the contact web page.

Note: We cannot guarantee that all feature requests will be implemented, but we can promise that the feedback we receive will influence future decisions. Every suggestion gives us a little more insight into the needs of our users, so please let us know how we can improve your experience.

Translation

Translators will be volunteers to subtitle the main website, lessons, documentation and/or the application itself. This will enable the free contents to crisscross languages and borders.

Translate H.urna and help more people around the world to learn in their native language. If you are interested in translating, please email us at support@hurna.io or use the contact web page.

Sponsoring / Donations

The development, hosting, maintenance of H.urna is unfortunately nontrivial and not free; therefore, people looking to participate financially are very welcome.

Making donation is a quick and easy way to support the project and get mentioned as a backer. Please email us at support@hurna.io or use the contact web page.

You may also become a sponsor and get your logo on H.urna with a link to your site.

Which programming language is supported?

The goal of H.urna is to make visualizations continually possible in a flexible, easy to use, easy to read and language-agnostic manner.

More generally, it aims to make the state of executing programs visible at a level of abstraction useful to programmers, either for debugging or for instructional algorithm visualization. H.urna relies on a meta-language generating logs within a json format that can be interpreted by our javascript players and visualizers. Therefore, any language may be used.

Please follow our Academy or ask the ' Community' to get more technical information.

May I use it on a smartphone?

H.urna is not designed to be user-friendly on small touch screens (e.g. smartphones) from the outset due to the need to cater to many complex algorithm visualizations. It is however functional on any device.

We support recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari version 6.2 or greater, recent versions of Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 10 or higher.

More questions?

Please follow our Academy or ask the ' Community' to get more technical information about H.urna and how to play with.