BetterPlex
The Application
The application can be seen at: https://jeffreyhyer.github.io/betterplex/
It is best viewed on a mobile phone or tablet but will work on any device with an internet connection.
EDGE Project Process
Research
Originally I has planned to use a data source such as Google Movies, Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango, or a similar data source to display showtimes for specific theatres near the current location of the user but after researching several sources I found that either
1) the data was unavailable due to licensing restrictions or
2) was prohibitively expensive
This forced me to reevaluate the scope of my project and limit it to showing newly released or soon to be released films within a broad region (i.e. the United States)
With this new information I decided that given the limitations of the data sources I would not need the additional features that a mobile application would provide (e.g. the users location, etc) so I decided to build the application as a web application instead. This would still provide the functionality I wanted but would allow me to offer the application to a broader range of users on both mobile devices and desktop/laptops as well through a web browser.
In the end I decided to use The Movie DB as the data source as they had very few restrictions on the way the data could be used and offered all the data I needed in once place (as opposed to combining multiple data sources).
I decided to build the application using the Vue.js JavaScript framework and I wrote a custom SDK to interface with the TMDB API.
Design
When I developed the proposal for this project (over two years ago now) I designed the application to be used on a mobile phone using the current best practices and design guidelines. Since then I changed the platform and the design guidelines have been updated and revised a number of times.
As a result I redesigned the application slightly to conform to the updated best practices and also to support the additional platforms the application would run on.
[Original Design Screenshot]
[Final Design Screenshot]
Code
I built this application using the Vue JavaScript framework. It is a popular framework used by many large companies to build modern web applications. I decided to use this framework due to it's popularity and real-world application with the intent of better learning a technology that could serve to bolster my resume and help me stand out as a job candidate in the future.
I also used HTML and CSS as well as a CSS preprocessor (Sass) to build out and realize the aesthetic and design of the application.