I’m not exactly sure for whom I’m writing or why I’m writing for that matter – but I feel I should have a blog to archive my thoughts and projects. As of late I’ve been working on the Columbia University ‘portal’ app for Android, which you may have seen here or on bwog. It’s still a work in progress and far from where I want it to be. But I’m glad there has been positive reception – apparently there has been a desire for a mobile app amongst Columbia faculty for a while now.
The Issues
Right now, the biggest issue with the set of current features is that some of the data doesn’t format nicely on the mobile interface. This is evident on bulletin or SSOL. HTML tables suck on mobile and both these sites love sending me tables via my AJAX returns. I probably have to write a better parser and spend more time styling, which won’t be fun.
Second, sometimes clicks just don’t register. Or scrolling is erratic. Or the load screen hangs. Or your Droid starts talking to you. I’m not too sure how to handle these and they’re probably ramifications of my non-native approach. Hopefully newer iterations of jQuery Mobile will fix some of these.
Upcoming Features
SSOL and Courseworks are the biggest upcoming features. SSOL is already in place, I just need to request CUIT for unlimited requests before I release it. If you remember during class registration, spamming the refresh button lands you a temporary IP ban on your connection. Now if a bunch of people using the app at once request SSOL, that’s the equivalent of spamming refresh and my server will get banned. So I have to talk to CUIT on how to proceed.
Some people are bringing up privacy concerns regarding the fact that you have to input your uni/pass to access SSOL or Courseworks. It’s not an issue. Your uni and pass will be stored locally – using HTML5 localStorage – meaning I’ll never see it. And why would I want to phish your credentials anyways? To log into your SSOL and drop you out of Lambert’s currently maxed out orgo class so I could get a spot? No, that’s ridiculous 
UX Redesign
The current interface is pretty shitty, I’m not gonna lie. I tried to model it after the Harvard mobile app (bad idea, I know), but I didn’t get the icons right. Thankfully Iiro Jäppinen designed a new set that looks substantially better. They should do, for now.
UX Redesign
I’m not sure if the traditional one-page icon interface is very scalable though. As more features are added (though I don’t want to add too much), the home page will become pretty cluttered. Kevin Zhang suggested a ‘carousel’- style UI which may be better suited.
Carousel design
Anyways, again the app is very much a work in progress. If anyone has any suggestions, concerns or wants to help out: shoot me an email.
