Technologies For Implementing Mortgage Calculators

J. L. Smith asked:




Mortgage calculators are a form of calculator that is often online and allows you to compute various details relating to mortgage payments and amortization. Such a calculator may take as inputs your mortgage rate and term as well as the principle balance an other related information. The calculator will then calculate pieces of information such as what your monthly payments will be, what portion of these payments will pay off principle verses interest payments and sometimes an amortization table that allows you to break your mortgage payments down by month.

In this article, I wanted to discuss some of the common technologies that are used to implement online mortgage calculators and the properties of these technologies. Some of these technologies include:

PHP with HTML forms: This is probably the most common implementation of such calculators. Basically, the web page containing the calculator will contain a form where you can input details about your mortgage (such as the mortgage rate, the principle, etc.) and then provide a button to calculate the payment details. When this button is pressed, the inputs you have entered will be sent back to the web server, where the calculations will be performed and another page will load with the mortgage results. While such calculators are very common, the requirement that another page with the results will load in the browser is a limitation in comparison to the next technology which is now being used by some more common calculators.

Javascript/AJAX: Javascript is a technology that can run programming code in your browser. A Javascript calculator will be able to use this code to compute the mortgage information in your browser and then set the results in various parts of your web page. As detailed above, the real advantage of this over the PHP with HTML forms above is that you do not need another page load when you perform the calculations. Another technology that can be integrated here is AJAX. AJAX allows the javascript code to communicate with the web server, that may potentially perform more complex calculations and return the results. The javascript can then display these results on the web page without the need for another page load. This technology essentially allows computations to be performed on a web server without the limitation of the page reloading from the first mentioned technology.

Flash: Flash is a technology created by Adobe, that allows tools such as calculators to be run within a web page using Adobe’s Flash player. Many people are aware of the Flash computer games that can be found on the web, and such a mortgage calculator is implemented in the same technology as such computer games.

Java Applets: Java applets are a lot less common that they used to be but you still see some calculators implemented in this technology. A Java applet is coded in a programming language called Java (not to be confused with Javascript). This applet is then downloaded in run on the browsers computer all within their web browser. In order for a Java applet to run, the browsers computer must have the Java run time environment installed. Most computers will have this installed now days and it can be downloaded free from the Sun website. This requirement to have Java installed is a limitation of this form of technology when comparing it to technologies such as Javascript/AJAX, as users who do not have Java installed will be interrupted by the applet and asked if they would like to install the technology.

These technologies represent some of the most common methods used to implement mortgage calculators.