Chrome Browser, Mac OS and LaTeX

Oh dear, something's awry with the interaction of LaTeX with the Chrome browser. The latter is not rendering variables in italics as it should. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of part of a post I made to my Mathematics blog. It was taken using the Safari browser and everthing looks fine.

Figure 1

Here's the same screenshot but this time taken within the Chrome browser.

Figure 2

It's not a major issue and everything else still works fine but it's a little annoying as I much prefer the italicised rendering of variables. It only has to do with Chrome on a device running the Mac operating system. The variables display properly on Chrome running on my Raspberry Pi 400 and even on Chrome running on iOS. Hopefully future updates will address this issue.

Symbolab

I've just had a look at a website called Symbolab that offers a many tools for the mathematics student and even the chemistry student. I tested it out with the following rather difficult integral:

I was impressed with the step-by-step solution provided for the problem. It was quite thorough. It seems to be largely free, although there is a modestly priced paid option, and there is both an Android and iOS app that I'll download and test out. It seems a worthy competitor to WolframAlpha that doesn't offer free, step-by-step solutions on its website or apps.

I was made aware of the site thanks to Richard Byrne's tweet:

https://twitter.com/rmbyrne/status/775696157171253248

I used to follow this guy but hadn't been doing so over the past year since I retired from full-time teaching. However, I reconnected yesterday and the reconnection is already paying benefits. I've opened a free account using my Facebook login.

UPDATE: having now downloaded the Android app, I've found that the step-by-step solutions are only available with a one-off payment of $9.99 (US dollars presumably) which is a lot more than WolframAlpha is asking. The iOS app is the same except that it wants $10.99. Consequently, I've uninstalled both the Android and iOS apps and will simply use the desktop version while it still provides the steps for free. The web version is still limited in various ways. For example, the full range of practice questions on various topics is only available via a subscription. 

Sway

Another spinoff of installing Windows 10 on VirtualBox was the discovery of Microsoft's Sway, described by Wikipedia as follows:

Office Sway is a presentation program and is part of the Microsoft Office family of products. Generally released by Microsoft in August 2015, Sway allows users who have a Microsoft account to combine text and media to create a presentable website. Users can pull content locally from the device in use, or from internet sources such as Bing, Facebook, OneDrive, and YouTube. Sways are stored on Microsoft's servers and are tied to the user's Microsoft account. They can be viewed and edited from any web browser with a web app available in Office Online. They can also be accessed using apps for Windows 10 and iOS. Additional apps are currently in development for Android and Windows Phone.

Sway is only available within Windows or iOS, so I have installed it on my iPad after discovering it on my Windows 10 installation and wondering what it was all about. Here is my first effort at creating a Sway presentation: