I thought I’d write about what I’ve learned so far with the developement of USEv4. I’ve been working at it for 2 weeks now and it’s come quite a long way, so quickly, here’s a list of what’s been done. Read more »
Well, I’ve been hard at the re-design for 2 days. The underlying code now seems a lot more readable, and the page is far more organised and robust. I believe I’ve completed the layout of each sections, and I’ve completed the first iteration of the header stylings, which I’ll show to you, right now Read more »
In mid-May, just before the start of exams, I created a survey for the members of the Uni-Sport.org network. This survey was designed to show me what was missing from the website and how I could improve it. It’s now early July and I’ve finally collated the results for everyone to see. After each graph I’ll give some of my personal thoughts and feedback on everyone’s suggestions, along with some deeper analysis if it is necessary to clarify anything. So, without further ado, lets get to the results! Read more »
Right, in the post below this one I said Uni-Sport will never be a facebook app in its current form. I’ll clarify that.
The USE (University Sports Engine) will never be a facebook app. Uni-Sport.org can be!
In January, I beta tested a simple RSS reader system that gathered statistics from the Uni-sport network and presented them in one big page. This type of functionality can be put into a facebook app. Basically, it’ll display news stories from the network and provide links for you to log in and talk on the forums, post news, read match reports etc. Not only does that involve facebook in Uni-Sport, (with USE changes) logging into facebook will allow you to see news stories in your facebook news feed, which then will take you to your Uni-sport site where you’ll already be logged in (by virtue of facebook’s active sessions)
You can expect to see this feature sooner rather than later
Steve
Well, facebook have certainly shaken things up a bit haven’t they. Almost totally opening up the API so developers can write applications that fit inside facebook itself! Utterly unheard of before, but potentially brilliant. Lets have a quick look at what you can do with all this new technology.
From the developer’s pages, developer.facebook.com they’ve created their own markup language, FBML. This allows for quick access to certain functions and their layout styles. Great stuff. You can also add in flash and mp3 files so people can listen to music. You can also add in an <iframe> element to display an off-site page. You can upload pictures from external applications and you can query the database using FQL (Facebook Query Language). This all sounds really great, but lets look at the limitations.
The big thing really is the ability to put iframes inside the canvas. From there you can do whatever you like inside the frame.
So, it all sounds good. Now it’s whether I can use it. Today I sent out an e-mail to all uni-sport.org members with a link to a survey on it (http://www.tigersurvey.com/survey.php?survey=2815) so I can get some feedback. One of the questions is about facebook and if people would want an extra feature, would it be better pictures, commenting, facebook integrates with profiles or uni-sport integrates with facebook in the way of an app. At the moment, I’m hoping a lot of people don’t go for the last option.
After some thought, I’m not sure if it would be possible to use facebook apps for such a complicated application as uni-sport. For it to work as it does at the moment, if a club asks for a web site, they will have to have their own unique facebook application. This is because of the team selection idea. If a group wanted to do team selection from within an application, only people in that group would be on the list. However, there is no way to make an application private between a group of people and AFAIK, no way to moderate who uses the application. There can’t be a global application as team selection wouldn’t work very well (it’d have to be select from people in network X who are members of group X, but that forces people to be in a group, which isn’t how it should work).
At the moment, Uni-sport is a glorified group page with team selection, match reports and a calendar. With team selection being at the heart of uni-sport, until private applications can be written, Uni-Sport will not be appearing as a facebook application.
Well, I’m glad that that decision has been made, now I can get back to my revision (lol)
Steve
Currently Listening to: David Ford
Currently Eating: Birthday Cake
Currently Reading: CSS Mastery and facebook documentation
Currently Watching: Lost season 3 finale. Amazing
Days left at University: 13
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