Goals

Back in 2017 I was involved in the development of CapstoneED, as part of my undergrad dissertation. Since it has been a while since I’ve done any web devlopment I decided to re-write the front-end (at least for now) following modern practices and putting the experience I have had since then to use.

My high level goals for the application are as follows:

• Use Angular: I like the framework and I do not want this side project to take forever.
• Keep the backend as is: I would like the old and new frontend to work on the exact same data while providing different experiences. Some bug fixes will inadvertendly have to happen, but I am trying to keep them to a minimum.
• Simplify the application structure: The original project had to have 3 different repositories; for the student, the lecturer and the shared. And even then the boundaries were less than clear, as changes would still have to be propagated between student and lecturer occasionally.
• Simplify deployment: I would like to be able to run a couple of commands at most and be able to demo the project at least.
• Reduce dependencies: In the javascript world it is very common to just npm install your problems away. My C++ background however has taught me the pain of external dependecies the hard way. To that end I will be trying to add as few dependencies as possible, even if that requires me writing a left-pad helper.

As far as the UI/UX is concerned I would like to:

• Make it mobile first instead of mobile friendly. At least for the student, as the lecturer view is more “Admin Dashboard” like.
• Add modern QoL that has become much more common (and expected) nowdays. For example, dark/light themes.

Preview

I have been working on this for a while as time allows, here is a side-by-side comparison of the two versions. New one is on the left, and the old one is on the right.