Bouwsteen Informatie Systeem
The development of a customised information system for a primary school involved crafting a web-based application with desktop quality usability.
My final college project involved a primary school whose desire was for an improvement over using Excel and Word to manage student information. Our solution came in the form of a web-based Javascript application that met their requirements. As such, the application was thoroughly tested against usability and user experience problems before it was handed over, and modeled after the standard Windows XP interface to provide for maximum ease of use on the part of the client.
The goal with this project was to teach myself several new skills, thus extending my capabilities and portfolio, while still meeting the needs of the users. Initial project assessments implied using Macromedia Flash was the way to go, but after looking over the direction the project was to take, as well as our deadlines, we decided to build it using XHTML and Javascript.
The result was an integrated software product that uses a MySQL database to securely store information, the Javascript XmlHttpRequest object to build a seamless desktop-style working environment for the user, and semantic markup to provide for cross-medial output as the client also requested easy print capability as a feature. All this was put together in an object oriented templating engine written in PHP, which combined with a Javascript event handler on the client to allow the user to work in as close an environment to Microsoft's Office suite as we could manage within a web browser.
