Week 11 Accomplishments

     This week, I have been finishing up a few things with the app and trying to complete my "extra" goals I made for myself last week. I was able to accomplish most of them, so I am really happy about that. One of the goals was to not allow people to register if the email they are using is not a UNK email, and I was able to add that in pretty easily. I also added in a filter to the tradition thumbnails on the list of traditions that shows a green check mark filter over the image if the tradition has already been completed. But this only is shown if the user is logged in and has traditions completed. The last thing I added in is messages that let the user know when they have reached a goal of completing a certain number of traditions. There is also a message that alerts a user when they have completed all of the traditions. These messages display instead of the usual "Completed Traditions!" message that the user would get. I also added icons to the help menu pop up. It still does not look the best, but it is better than it was. I was not able to add in the emailing function I talked about, but that will be something to consider for a future addition.

     Overall, I think I have had a fairly successful time working on this project and learning more about developing apps. I definitely started out with too large of a scope for the project, and that is something I will need to work on. But I have learned a lot about how databases work and how they can communicate with other devices. I also learned about developing apps and all of the detail that needs to go into it to make sure that they work correctly. The biggest challenge for me initially was learning about project planning from a project manager's perspective because my department does not do that, and so trying to do that was interesting to learn about. But I hope to take what I have learned this semester and apply it as I finish up my college career and go out into the real world to work.

Here is the page with some of the  traditions completed	Here is the number of traditions completed message	Here is the all completed message a user would get
The new help menu with icons	The message for an invalid email

Week 10 Accomplishments

       Since my last blog, I have made quite a bit of progress with my Android app, but I also decided to only focus on that app for now so I could get it completed, because working on both apps was starting to be too much. If I am able to, I might try to go back and look at both apps next semester again, but we'll see what happens.

       With the Android app, I was able to finish setting up all of the database calls that I needed for creating users, logging in, viewing traditions, and completing traditions. I created a few procedures that I could use to do most of these actions, and I have one trigger on the database that updates my student level table if a student completes so many traditions and if a student completes all of the traditions. There are still some things that could be fixed and changed, but it at least can complete all of the basic things that make the app, so I am happy about that.

       I have also continued to make some style changes to the app. I changed the icons to the navigation menu, and I am still working on improving the help menu that pops up. I have fixed a few layout issues on some of the pages, and I improved the back button functionality of the app, since I think that the users should be able to use the button since it is there on Android devices.

       I am still not sure how functional using JDBC for connecting to the database is for mobile devices, but it is what I am using for now. I would have liked to have had the opportunity or time to try a different type of connection, but that just did not work out. My app works for just one device, but I do not know how it would work if multiple devices were using it. But that will probably be something I figure out in the future and not right now.

       A few things that I would like to work on for the final product for the class are trying to figure out if there is a way to email someone if a user completes all of the traditions, figure out a way to mark off traditions when they are completed for the user, show an annoucement to the user when they complete all of the traditions, and add in something to edit the registration form so it will not all users to register for the app unless they are using an email address associated with UNK. I do not know how many of these things I will complete by the time the app is due, but they will be good goals that I can strive for as the semester finishes up.

Navigation with new icons	Slightly improved Help menu	Empty fields Registration message
Registration completed message	Account already created message	Incorrect log in information message
Log in success message	Options for completing tradition	Completion attempt - not logged in
Tradition Completed Success Message	Tradition already completed message