Working Progress:

Phase 1:

  • First design of the Tau-Tab main requirements and Technology research.
  • Testing the ability to extract data from the university “yedion” (web site for extracting data regarding university courses).
  • Building a small igoogle gadget for learning sake.

Phase 2:

  • Selecting the main technologies for the Tau-Tab:
    1. Extracting data from the “yedion“– Php.
    2. Igoogle gadgets – Java Script.
    3. Communication between gadgets- Transmitting via “Pub Sub”.
    4. Saving users data – User prefs.
  • Learning and experimenting with the chosen technologies.

Phase 3:

  • Building a basic stand alone “yedion” gadget that extract courses data from the yedion (Testing the “yedion” by printing to the screen searched courses).
  • Building a basic stand alone “hourTable” gadget that displays selected groups in the “hourTable” (Testing the “hourTable “by manually inserting courses data).

Phase 4:

  • Designing a communication protocol for both sided and starting communicating between the gadgets via pub sub.
  • Saving users data of courses through igoogle’s user prefs (Their was a need for total coordination between the gadgets).
  • Adding the ability for the user to get all of his/hers course information by standing on an hour in the hourTable.
  • Adding the ability to remove or change courses in the “hourTable”.
  • Adding the ability to extract all of the courses forms in the “yedion”.

Phase 5:

  • Building a basic “webPages” gadget that contains a few basic web sites and links and can dynamically load and save new web sites that the “yedion” transmits to it.
  • Adjusting the gadgets to run on different platforms (Internet Explorer & FireFox).
  • Discovering that the gadgets crash after searching and saving the data of 2-3 courses.

Phase 6:

  • Testing and getting to the root of the crashing problem- the space we need in order to save all of the courses data exceeds the space given to a user by igoogle.
  • Exploring different solutions for this problem (using a data base, reducing the amount of data to save and saving data in a more efficient way).
  • Choosing the option of using Json to save data in a more organized and efficient way. Also reducing the amount of data to be saved to as minimum as possible and testing the solution.
  • Improving the GUI and the user experience.

Phase 7:

  • Developing an efficient way to get all the other data that was lost in the reducing part. The less urgent data (the courses data of location, teachers, exams and web Pages) is not saved but re-fetched from the yedion after the gadget is loaded. The data that was fetched is saved in a Map struct.
  • Integrating with the “heb-calander” gadget. Building a protocol for this cooperation and dividing the responsibilities of each group.
  • Dealing with major differences between the different browsers.
  • Increasing the abilities of the “webPages” gadget to add and remove courses both manually and also from the “yedion”.

Phase 8:

  • Fixing last bugs.
  • Adding new features to the “hourTable” to merge hours of same lectures, calculate useful data for the user regarding his/hers weekly schedule, and print a formatted version of the hour table containing a table below with all of the courses data.

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