I am not going to give you a full introduction to the Game of Life here. If it is completely new to you please read the referring Wikipedia article in English or in German.
Years ago I wrote a Game of Life in Perl/TK. You can still download it from CPAN (but it is a script only, not a module) or as executables for Windows XP or higher (32bit) or Windows XP or higher (64bit) from here. When I started to publish a website I translated it into JavaScript. Main purpose was to have a simple rule editor with which I can easily play around. Both the Perl and the JavaScript version depend heavily on the performance of your hardware when matrices are large.
Unfortunately there are some browser issues with the JavaScript version. The Internet Explorer does not render the cells procisely squared. If you do not want to use another browser you should always insert the grid. And in Firefox and Webkit browsers the timer that directs the cell updates does not run fully smooth which can lead to some jerking.
You can find the editable game here. Furthermore there are examples of a glider, the evolution of a r-pentomino and a glider gun as an instance of persistent growth.
Enjoy!
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