According to Crocodile Clips, absorb MATHEMATICS is "a new range of courseware that includes an engrossing mix of simulations and models, together with tutorial-style activity, videos and interactive animations. "

Of course there is any number of textbooks available now for GCSE preparation. The overiding focus of this review is simply to see what this "courseware" offers that cannot be found in a conventional text.
Once the appropriate version of the materials is selected (mine was the HTML version) the software is installed onto the computer harddrive. Upon running the program, your browser is launched and takes you to the contents page, which lists these available topic areas:

For each of these there is a short list of specific topics, which lead to a page of interactive material. This page will attempt to cover the essentials of the topic, beginning with a brief introduction, possibly illustrated by photographs, and ending with exercises that test overall understanding. The content will include most if not all of explanatory text and diagrams, short questions with single or multiple choice answers, step-by-step explanation of concepts and interactive displays. The interactive displays may be embedded in the page, which I prefer, or you may have to click on the display in order to fire up the "Absorb viewer" in a separate window that gives access to further interactivity.

I am not sure about the viability of the Absorb viewer. It is slow to load, and seems rather slow and clunky in operation too. It does increase the interactivity of the materials, but this could have been achieved more efficiently in other ways, using either Flash animations or Java applets, for example. As it seems to have been produced out of the Mozilla organisation (who are connected with the Netscape browser) it is surprising that it is not better integrated into the browser display. Nevertheless, there is a wide variety of interactivity available, of which the following give a flavour.

By clicking on the arrows, this display takes you step by step through the method of constructing a regular polygon. You can choose how many sides as well.
	The protractor can be moved by dragging the mouse and then rotated using the slider.
The ends of the vector can be dragged with the mouse and the corresponding values in the numerical version will change accordingly.
	When you drag the slider the graph and equation change accordingly.

Many such displays are actually Flash animations, but executed simply and intuitively so no detailed instructions are necessary. It is examples like these - and there are many others in the absorb MATHEMATICS material - that make this resource clearly distinct to a conventional text. Examples like the above are, I believe, excellent illustrations of what web technology can do and further evidence of why the Internet should be a major influence on the direction educational resources should go. (If I had access to serious financial assistance then MathsNet would move in this direction too.)
Equations of straight lines are well presented, as are vectors, and there are some neat interactive presentations of ideas of multiples, factors and remainders. Some equations are set up so that you can click on a variable within it and that is instantly made the subject. The style is simple and clean and uncluttered by unnecessary graphics. A few topics, Comparing fractions for example, are not so strong interactively. Other absorb MATHEMATICS examples use simpler interactive methods based on JavaScript, which do provide instant response to answers entered, but on their own would not make this package an essential purchase.

There is an index of topics and a glossary of terms, both with links directly into the courseware content. The publishers state that absorb MATHEMATICS is designed for use by pupils studying mathematics, either in school or at home, and it does come across like that. It is not a teaching aid. It is not a revision guide either. There are no pages explaining how these materials "should" be used. Clearly, it is designed for the individual student sat at the computer. In this respect it is in competion with online resources from the major media companies BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian and others. And it is not free. But a direct consequence of it not being free is, bluntly, that it is good! There is evidence of quality control here. There is a concept being worked through with these materials which has been put into cohesive effect by the Crocodile Clips team in a simple intuitive way.

On the negative side, maybe the very long pages should have been broken down into smaller chunks. As they are they require fairly skillful use of the mouse and sliders to keep the right amount of text and graphics visiable. I would like less JavaScript multiple choice content and more genuine interactivity - Flash based. Some interactions seems to run very slowly on my machine too. The language is simple but the presentation is not geared towards the less able. Though no GCSE "levels" are indicated anywhere (which I don't mind), it does feel designed for Intermediate and above.

Crocodile-Clips have a good track record with simulations for schools. I like this product. It is not a textbook on screen. And it is not a subliminal advertisement for some London based graphic design studio either. It has a style which is not unlike some aspects of this website (MathsNet) - though admittedly more professionally turned out. That's high praise!