re: Scientific notation on the Internet.
I know what you mean. One trick I've adopted is to use words for symbols, like "Integral" for the Big S, or '"Summation" for capital sigma, with the argument of the operation in parentheses. Subscripts can be replaced by numbers and letters in parentheses, and exponentiation with the " ** " or the " ^ " . Liberal use of parens, brackets, and curlys help too. Preceding your discussion with some of the easier expressions your reader is already likely to be familiar with can get him quickly accustomed to your notation. For example,
M(v) = M(0) / SQRT ( 1 - (v/c)**2 ) or
F = d(mv)/dt = m dv/dt + v dm/dt
The only problem is that your text starts to look like it was written in FORTRAN.