This is a tweaked version of the code that runs the SRCCON schedule, filled with session data from last year's MozFest. I randomized some of the data to make sure each schedule block had a representative number of sessions, so start times might look a little weird here and there.
This is just a test to see whether the SRCCON code would be a useful starting point for this year's MozFest schedule.
A few thoughts on this test:
- It feels reasonably snappy to use, even with 330+ sessions. There is a bit of lag when switching between panes, and the search function in the "All" tab isn't quite as fast as it would be with fewer sessions. There are probably some optimizations to be found that weren't needed previously.
- A bigger concern: SRCCON has 40-50 sessions over two days, and the UI was designed with that in mind. Whether usability is still good at 6-7x the number of sessions is worth a hard look.
- SRCCON did not have a need to filter sessions by "space" or "pathway," but MozFest likely will. I have some thoughts on how that might be fit into the UI, but again, this is worth a hard look.
Design notes:
- built primarily for mobile use, assuming that people will need this on location at the event
- tapping on a session opens its full description (using a template that allows for additional data if necessary)
- provides a full-text, searchable session list in addition to day-by-day schedule tabs
- session favoriting (using browser localstorage) populates a per-device custom schedule tab
- can use appcache, such as it is, to provide offline support for those special conference wifi moments
- repo includes local versions of OpenSans font files, to get around cache manifest fetching bugs in some browsers
- does its best to handle "back" navigation in offline mode, where there is no
window.history
- highlights schedule tab for current date if possible
- colors denote normal-length and long sessions, and long sessions are "ghosted" into the following schedule block to show that they're still going on
Technical notes:
- stores data in a single json file, generated by a Python script that pulls data from a Google Docs spreadsheet
- designed to publish via GitHub Pages (triggering the Python script to update schedule data also creates an automated commit, which rebuilds the schedule site)
- uses jQuery and Underscore for DOM and data manipulation
- uses marked for pretty text formatting
This app was originally built on the fly in the week before SRCCON 2014, so some components are fairly bespoke. A couple things I've been intending to address:
- tab dates are defined in
schedule.jsitself, rather than calculated by looking for unique values from the list of sessions - color categories are tied to SRCCON's 1- and 2.5-hour session formats