This is the "main" page of an applet for cellular automata, employing autodetection of patterns (color-coding and counting of patterns with known properties). The program was written using Borland's JBuilder for Java.
Introduction: What is the Game
of Life? Take a tour of the most important and interesting
patterns here
Yet Another Implementation? Why offer
this program? What features this program provides
Cool Universes: Experiment with
interesting cellular automata rules (other than Conway's)
The Architecture: [Link not ready yet]
See what architectural decisions have been made in this
implementation
Listed below are some web pages that played a role in the development of this program (links in nearly alphabetical order).
Johan G. Bontes
Life32 program. Freeware for Windows 95/98/NT (works in all
newest Windows platforms, too). This is my "standard"
for the Game of Life. It was used both as a model for this
interface, and for answering any question I had in this domain.
Clearly the highest quality CA program for the Windows platform,
to the best of my knowledge. (If you disagree, please let me know!)
David I. Bell's home page.
Includes many of his programs for UNIX (X11 graphics) and Linux,
articles, and archives of patterns. Bell is the author of two
articles on other cellular automata universes (Day&Night, and
HighLife) that I have illustrated (see the Cool
Universes page), and the creator of some patterns offered by
this applet.
Paul
Callahan's pages, with animated figures, a glossary
(by Alan Hensel, see below, which I adopted in the introduction page), an illustrated
catalog of patterns (also by Alan Hensel), and more
resources. Callahan is also the creator of some patterns
offered by this applet.
David Eppstein's
pages, including databases
of gliders and replicators
in various universes.
Also includes a critique
of Stephen Wolfram's classification of cellular automata, and
Eppstein's own classification.
Achim
Flammenkamp's pages, with a link to Xlife-3.5, a program
written in C for UNIX (X11 graphics), and lots of other
interesting information. He gives patterns in GIFs without a
grid, though, and that makes it a bit hard to input them to a
program. Flammenkamp is the creator of some patterns offered by
this applet.
Alan Hensel's
superfast applet. Clearly the fastest way to run Life
patterns on the web 
much
faster than this one! Hensel is also the creator of some patterns
offered by this applet.
Dean
Hickerson's pages, with plenty of patterns designed by him,
several of which appear among the patterns offered by this
applet. Unfortunately his patterns are not animated, so you'll
have to use a copy-and-paste method to see them running (e.g.,
you copy from his pages and paste in a program such as Bontes' see first link).
Andrew
Trevorrow's program, shareware for Macs, which does many of
the things this applet can do, plus it can search for
Methuselahs, and a few more things.
Mirek
Wojtowicz's page and his
MJCell
program: an applet that allows experimentation in various CA universes. Here
is his CA rules lexicon.