There’s nothing like interactivity to add some jazz to your web pages. True that the present-day blog format allows discussions on posted content, but adding comments is rather dry when compared to an application like Hot Potatoes, that lets you add a variety of puzzles to your site.

Hot Potatoes (http://hotpot.uvic.ca/) is a suite of puzzle authoring tools brought to you courtesy the Humanities Computing and Media Centre of the University of Victoria, Canada. Free of charge, the application lets you create interactive web pages (that can be used offline or on a website) using standard XHTML code and JavaScript. The output adheres to prevalent web standards, thus can be used on all modern browsers.

Hot Potatoes consists of:

JQuiz, which creates interactive quizzes. These can be in a multiple-choice format, short-answer questions, or a combination of the two.

JCloze, a fill-in-the-blanks type of exercise where the user fills in gaps in a block of text using logic or hints provided.

JMix, a jumble creator where users need to make sense of a jumbled word or sentence. This comes in two formats — a drag-and-drop one where the letters/words have to be dragged into place, and a standard one where one must click on the letter/word next in sequence.

JMatch is a module that creates matching exercises, where users must match a list of items in one column with the (jumbled) list in the other column.

JCross is a crossword-making tool — users click on a number in the crossword grid to get clues and then enter the text.

Finally, the Masher is a module that can help create larger units of exercises using some of all of the Hot Potatoes tools.

Hot Potatoes requires no technical skills from the creator of the puzzles. Simply choose the type of puzzle you want and enter your data. Next, configure the output from the Options menu, including the appearance of your puzzle, such as instructions, messages, button types, colours and so on, as well as adding elements, say, a timer. Finally, have Hot Potatoes generate an output for you in the form of a web page — you won’t be called upon to write any of the code. There is a built-in tutorial, and also help associated with all the Hot Potatoes modules.

The puzzles can be as simple or complex as you can make them. You may use hints and clues to help the user along, and there is an option to check answers. Apart from creating fun puzzles, Hot Potatoes also makes for an amazing learning tool for students. It is possible for teachers and instructors to upload puzzles to the HotPotatoes.net servers where students can log in to complete exercises and their scores can be monitored. This, however, is a paid service. Should you want to upload Hot Potatoes exercises to your own site or use them on any computer or a local network, you are free to do so at no cost.

Another exciting application, also freeware, from the creators of Hot Potatoes, is Quandry. This can be used to created web-based interactive action mazes. Users are given a situation and a number of possible choices. Their chosen course of action results in a consequence, which again provides them a different set of options to go forward. Action mazes can be plain fun — such as creating games — or used for serious stuff like tutorials and problem solving.

Payal Dhar is a freelance technology writer