Hi Ross,
I glanced through the planned schedule of to coming Gibbon Training Day 2017. I came across “Gibbon on mobile”. This sounds terrific! Can you tell me more?
Kind regards,
Roman
Hi Ross,
I think that making Gibbon responsive is definitely important!
However, responsive designs are rather hard to maintain due to their complexity and the availability of so many browsers. Nobody may really be happy with the results incl. the developers.
I’m currently facing problems with Twitter Bootstrap 3 and the new Edge browser of MS. Forcing users to not use a particular browser is something.
I was hoping that we could move things further by adding an Android app.
Is this completely out of reach? Wouldn’t that be cool?
Kind regards,
Roman
Roman, well, we feel a real need to make Gibbon mobile responsive, and this is something we have played with in the past. Where we have always gotten stuck is that the code base is so big with so much repeated code. So, v14 is focused on making the code based object oriented in order to reduce code repetition. Once this is done, it will be much easier, hopefully in v15 (all going to plan) to get responsive design in place. We are working hard to make this happen, but as always, we are just volunteers and so not making any promises. Ross.
Roman,
Responsive can be tricky, you are right. However, @skuipers is experienced in this area and is confident she can make it work. Certainly there are examples of highly functional responsive web apps our there.
Having the resources to do native Android and iOS apps would be nice, but we are simply not in that position, and I am not sure it would be the best way for us to proceed, even if we were.
Hope this helps, and does not dampen your enthusiasm!
Ross
Came across and was really impressed with AdminLTE (https://adminlte.io/) - a free powerful admin frontend with multiple features and controls built-in. In some ways similar to ExtJS, built on top Bootstrap 3.
Might be helpful in this “responsive” direction. Can not speak of quality or usability for Gibbon, needs a Pro’s look.
Victor
RE Android app, in my experience while I’ve made Android applications before, ideally we’d need to get everything moved over to the new codebase planned on Trello first. Once that’s done, the next step would need to be an API. No API tends to lead to those app hangs you see on less well written apps.
I’ll actually kinda-sorta be writing an API for a module I’m making so that may help with one of the issues.
I saw the website: https://www.dreamfactory.com which can be used to generate APIs in real time. @jimbo8098 Are you in a position to design an android app for the community?
I think an API would be great, although it is not a current priority for the core, as we are focusing on the OO rewrite and then moving towards mobile responsive. Doesn’t mean someone can build it and contribute it though ; )
My worries would be security of data access, and the ability for schools to limit which data can be access via the API.
@admin Normally for applications I work with, you white-list the IP addresses of the software or apps that you need to access your services. This way you are able to control access and also be able to audit usage.
I work for a company that would use said API. I’ve actually been working on a very basic API on my end as part of a module I’m writing but one of the issues I’m seeing so far is really down to Gibbon not being object oriented. Once it moves to that design, it will be a lot easier to write larger things like APIs but I could see it helping make pages load dynamically too.
In most cases, API providers use either an API key or credential login along with the allow list. In the UK, we have DFE references too, some providers use those.
For the moment I’m working on some of the longer standing things on the Trello board and once I’m in a position to help with the API I would certainly be open to it.