Final Release: v1.0

The fourth release for this project has been completed.

Thank you for being patient and understanding clients over the last couple months. We hope that our application meets your needs and exceeds your expectations. It's been a pleasure to work with you.

Here are the release notes:

New features

• Expanded housing option for returned/target location

• New button styles, tabs, footer shading, and developer logo
  

• Printer-friendly page view option with limited styling
  

• Dynamic help links identify the selected questions
  

• Additional color selectors for better customization

• Reduced housing prices for more realistic results
  

• Background slightly darkened for better contrast

• Update button now requires existing search

• Overall ppearance and flow of layout improved
  

Current version: 1.0

Version history: link

Thank you for being a fantastic developer!

Thank you for developing a fantastic product. We, team Erotics, noticed you were receptive to our criticism and comments, as well as creating a product that would satisfy our persona's requirements. Team Erotics thanks you for developing for us.

Preview Release: v0.4.3

This preview release will be the last version before the project is finished on Friday. Please take a good look at it and let us know of any last minute changes you want made, because this is your last chance for input. However. we cannot guarantee that we will be able to accommodate any further requests.

In regards to the order of city and state input fields on the first page of the project, please read the comments on last version's post and come to a decision about it. I personally think that the current order is the best for the purposes of meaning and sentence structure, and will not change it unless your group comes to an alternate consensus.

I am not going to write release notes for this pre-release, so to see a list of all changes made, take a look at the version history.

Preview release: 0.4.3

Version history: link

Deadline Release: v0.4.0

The fourth release for this project has been completed.

We have only a week left and if you would like us to make any changes, we need to know right away. Also, let us know what you think of the new logo and title, as your original design (given to us by Kevin) has been modified.

Here are the release notes:

New features

• New logo and title, based upon your existing design
• New slogan added to the title bar
  
• Inner background color slightly darkened for better form contrast
• Fully functional advanced options, including:
• Housing result options such as ownership, price, and distance
  
• Search result limitations and results updater
  
• New color changer
• Search form shifts focus to city after state is selected
  
• Redesigned and expanded help page
• Improved design, increased unification, better user flow, and more efficient code

Known issues/future plans

• Housing price ranges are rather high, and will be lowered
• Possible choice of housing distance, between target city and result cities
  
• A few minor graphical aspects become distorted when font size is changed
  

Current version: 0.4.0

Version history: link

More comments about prototypes

Some final comments:

The site looks nice, you've done a nice job. I see what you mean with the city/state organization, until we can come up with something else, if ever, leave that as is. Massachusetts has both Winthrop and Winchester duplicated. They return the same search values, so this seems unnecessary. Is there a way to 'tab back' to the city after you select state? That would be nice. The upper-left corner has a color scale, can we just have that rounded off like the rest of the corners? Also, are there any jobs that can be searched for, but with your selection of languages never gets returned by a search? At some time, I will send you a photo to place atop near the logo. Thank you very much! You've done a fantastic job!

Deadline Release: v0.3.0

The third release for this project has been completed.

We changed the title of the page because we need to put your logo at the top. You mentioned that you were working on a title and logo. Once you give us that information, we can put it at the top.

Here are the release notes:

New features

• Tabbed navigation with new sections: 'advanced', 'help' and 'about'
• 'Other' skill customizable with search keywords
• Preloaded city listings, with plentiful choices
  
• Listings for nearby available housing
• Help links where needed for guidance
• Icons for housing and description previews
• Skill set choices greatly expanded
  
• Sort order indicators on search result tables
  
• New and smaller loading indicator
  
• Major data parsing bugs corrected
• Less intrusive error reporting
• Temporary title now includes client name
  

Known issues/future plans

• Advanced options are not yet implemented
• Color choices will be moved to the advanced section, along with housing options
• Help section will be expanded as needed
• A few minor graphical aspects become distorted when font size is changed
  

Current version: 0.3.0

Version history: link

Pick A Loader

One of your groups members didn't like the loading screen, so we are working with other options. If you want us to simply add a loading image in the search result area, you should select between these, which I think look the best:
Loader 1
Loader 3
Loader 4
Loader 6
Or, you can go to this site and find one that you like.

If you like the full screen loader, let us know and we won't change it .

Deadline Release: v0.2.0

The second release for this project has been completed. Unfortunately, there are a few primitive aspects that have not been addressed at this point, because you have failed to give us appropriate feedback. As soon as possible, please answer the following questions:

-Do you want the search to focus on programming languages or on broader categories related to information technology? We used programming languages in our early prototypes because most computer science students are familiar with them and as keywords, they return very good search results. Please let us know which direction you want us to go. We are thinking of changing the way user choose their skills (ie free-form text, drop down menu, etc.) and we are definitely going to expand the options once you let us know where you want to go with it.
-Do you have any preferences towards a project title, logo or color scheme? We want to design this application to your liking, so we need to know your stylistic preferences.

Here are the release notes:

New features
-Preview snippets of each job listing's description
-Overlay and indicator for loading time
-Posting date for search results
-Form validation and error checking
-Access to project version history
-Timeout detection/empty result sets
-Feedback and contact link
-A modified overall layout

Known issues/future plans
-On rare occasions, certain search results are not parsed properly, which will be fixed in newer versions
-CSS does not validate because opacity attributes are not part of the current standard
-Links to nearby housing will eventually be added to each search result
-Ranking of search results is being debated, due to lack of measurement parameters
-City choice is currently based on text entry. We have not yet chosen to dynamically populate cities based on state, because that would require us to put too many cities for too many states in the drop down list. If you want us to do that, we will only be able to use a limited number of cities and states.
-Dr. Maner also suggested changing the background color of the form field that the user is currently focused on. Unfortunately, this does not work well for drop-down menus in Firefox, as for some reason, it then requires two clicks to select an option.

Current version: 0.2.0

Version history: link

Newly Designed Prototype

Here is the newly designed site for our project...it doesn't work for Mozilla for some reason but I'll be working on that over the weekend. Hopefully we can at least get it to work for IE with some php to scrape sites for tomorrow (Friday).

NEW DESIGN

Deadline Release: v0.1.1

For the purpose of today's deadline, the current build is 0.1.1, a slightly modified version of the previous early release. The interface is basically unchanged from version 0.1.0, but the code has been optimized and upgraded for W3C validation. Therefore, the release notes for this version are identical to its predecessor, which can be found here.

Current release: Version 0.1.1

Most importantly, please answer the questions that we had for you in the 0.1.0 release notes. Until feedback is implemented within the application, please leave your comments here.

Main Scenario for the search project

Title: Find Prospective IT Job

Goal: To have a list of Prospective Software Development Jobs

User: A Recent College Graduate with a 4-year IT degree seeking an Entry Level Job, which matches a given skill set and within a certain distance of a given location.

System: A functioning Job Search Program used over a web browser.

Use Case Scenario:

User:
User somehow opens the Search Program

System:
Program displays Search Page
Program somehow Requests Desired City Location

User:
User somehow enters desired City Location

System:
Program somehow Requests Desired State Location

User:
User somehow enters desired State Location

System:
Program somehow Requests Desired Distance from City

User:
User somehow enters desired Distance from City

System:
Program somehow Requests the User Skill Set User somehow enters desired User Skill Set

User:
User somehow activates a search
User waits for results

System:
System somehow displays results of Prospective Jobs depending on his given details and criteria.

we would like to hear from you if you want to really have any changes in our proposed scenario

Version 0.1 now available

The first working version of project "hippoHIRE" has just been released. The current title of the project is simply a codename and you may suggest a proper name if you would like. A logo will be designed once this is decided upon. Additionally, you will notice a color selector to the left of the header. This was done so that you can choose a color that you feel would best fit this application (this changes the color of the page header and table column headers). The color chooser is only temporary for testing purposes, but it can become permanent if you wish it so. Currently, the options for searchable skill sets are listed as a few popular programming languages. It is up to the client to decide if this search method should remain as-is (e.g., JavaScript, XHTML, c++, etc.) or if the search should be more broad (e.g., networking, programming, hardware, etc.) The same goes for the distance selected in miles. This can remain static, or it can be modifiable.

Other features/known issues:

• The table of search results is alphabetically sortable by clicking on the header of the column you wish to sort. This works in both ascending and descending order.
  
• As more skills are selected for a search, more jobs will appear, as the application searches for results that contain any of the selected skills.
  
• Default search parameters will be removed in the final version.
  
• We currently support Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0+. We have not yet tested on Safari and beyond that, we do not plan to support any other browsers. If we get a chance to test other browsers, we will.
  
• At this early stage of development, there are only three columns of data returned by the application. The client requested a ranking system and a "distance from you" dataset. These features have not yet been implemented.
  
• This application specifically searches for entry-level positions, although sometimes, jobs requiring more experience slip through the filter and are displayed on the page. This is usually a result of improper listing on the search engines that we are using to power this application. Since there is nothing we can do at this point about false listings on those sites, we do not currently plan the check for false posts.
  
• Error checking on search fields does not exist at this point. If the user does not enter a city, results will be returned for the entire state, and the city/state listing may not be displayed correctly. If no skills are entered, all jobs for the chosen location will be returned, even if they are not IT related. While this flexibility is usually favorable in web searches, this application is being developed for a specific kind of client, so this may add unwanted complexity. It is up to the client to decide whether we should restrict the search in this regard. Also, if the city you enter yields no results, there is currently no response from the system other than the "Loading Search Results" message, which simply does not change if there are no results.

Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions.
You can find the current version here.

First Release On Its Way!

The first official release of this project, currently codenamed "HippoHire," is expected to be published here before the Nov. 2 deadline, this is, sometime next week. Development is coming along rather smoothly, with the most basic function of the application operational as of today. Each release will be accompanied by an explanation of all the changes that have occurred in the project since the previous release, as well as a request for any information we are going to need from you before we can move on. Feel free to send us any info that you feel is going to be important for this project, including any requests for an official title and/or description. That's all for now and have a great weekend!

Development of Mock Up Interface

Hi this is Krishna the leader of the Hippos,

We have developed our first initial Interface on basis of the pipes prototype that was forwarded to us. We tried to accommodate all the enhancements for the interface that you( Team Erotics) have asked for. Please keep in mind that this is an initial interface which we will be enhancing with time with your consent.

The initial main page would look something like this

This interface was developed with your yahoo pipes prototype in mind, and we have also used the same default values that you have used in your prototype.

Unless you want them differently, we would like to have a drop down box for both the distance range( typically the ranges would vary by a value of 10 miles so they may be 10, 20, 30) and also for the state entry. The city name could be entered in the text field. We wanted to know if you are looking for any specific skill set or specific languages to be given as options in the check box and would like to hear from you about that. Typically we would have a search button which would lead us to the next page which would display the results which would roughly look like this.
The results will be displayed with the percentage match as the first column as it is the main important criteria followed by the company name , then by job title followed by the job description if any and then by the required skill set and the miles away from the desired place specified in the search page.

Although its too early in the development phase to consider the percentage match calculations we have provided you with examples that may give you an idea of how this %match is going to work. We are looking at giving weights for the distance of the searched job from the desired location and also the match of the skill set, the third example for instance the user did not check the pearl option in the search page and so he gets a lower % match.

The forth example is used to illustrate the example where the skill set may not match but the job may be queried on the basis of it being nearer to the desired location. And there is always a chance for javascript being queried for java.

We the hippos would like to hear your suggestions and coments on our interface for its improvement according to your expectations.

Welcome to the Blog!

Please, feel free to ask any questions here, we will promptly respond to them. We intend to share our opinions about the product as often as we can. Thank you!