erik-cupsa / mcgill-scheduler Goto Github PK

Could the page default to having all years selected if there is no years url param?
https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/historical
That way I can link to the historical page for all years without having to know what years are supported:
https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/historical?names=COMP%20330

From prev, something to keep an eye on:

I haven't looked into this sufficiently but I'd want to be able to confirm whether McGill ever updates the exam time/details on the tentative schedule or the time/details/location on the final schedule which would invalidate the previously-exported exam schedule data. Any info you have on that would be very helpful. I'd recommend in general though to add a disclaimer to your site that the data being exported will not automatically stay up to date (some users might have the impression that what they export to their calendar will stay in sync with any updates on the mcgill site) and that users should always double check against the McGill exam pdf closer to their exam date.
Along the same lines, having your site indicating the pdf from which it sourced the exam data would be nice for users with the same concern. Some thing like "The data exported was sourced from https://www.mcgill.ca/exams/files/exams/april_2024_final_schedulef8.pdf".
If the backend could automatically pull and parse the latest pdf linked at https://www.mcgill.ca/exams/dates and update itself that would also be great.

A few different but related concerns here.

1. The loading delay at the start of every page feels excessive. Takes ~4s to show the search bar on https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/search. and then there is a similar delay after every search and then to get to the export page.

2. Keeping the calendar table on a separate page from search/add means the user can't see what courses they've previously added once they do another search.

3. Once they've added all their courses, its not actually clear where to go next. There is a big Search button but no large button to go to the export page. The export page link in the nav bar is just an icon and it's not immediately clear that's what you have to click to get to the export page. On mobile it's hidden in the hamburger menu so it requires two clicks to get from the search page to the export page.

4. The Calendar export window is scrollable. I think it makes sense for the search results table to be scrollable since you can have plenty of results but on the calendar export page I would suggest just displaying everything since presumably users aren't exporting more than a half dozen courses.

Suggestions:

I think the loading in between everything and the search/add and calendar pages being separate makes the experience a bit tedious. Would highly suggest combining the two. For inspiration I'd recommend the interface on this exam schedule exporter made a few years ago but no longer maintained https://myexams2.vercel.app

When table has max results on Data Handling page, result text gets pushed out of window

From prev: Keeping the calendar table on a separate page from search/add means the user can't see what courses they've previously added once they do another search.

Consider combining the two.

This seems to be Windows specific since I don't see this behavior on Mac. Behavior is consistent across browsers (tested Chrome and Firefox) on Windows.
From a very brief google search, is seems like there might be default css differences across os even for the same browser but didn't dig into this much further
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74691327/apple-mac-computers-are-rendering-basic-css-differently-than-windows-both-usi
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24076016/css-rendering-in-same-browsers-in-different-os

Export calendar button is poorly placed for mobile view

Search page doesn't keep track of currently added courses (courses in local storage) so it's possible to add the same course twice. Can't imagine a use case for having a calendar export with dups so should probably prevent this.

Change the search bar functionality. Say I search "COMP 330, MATH 240" but then want to add a course to that, I have to retype everything. I think not clearing search bar is a better ux

There have been exam schedule export apps made by students in the past and while I've considered integrating links to them or that sort of functionality into the extension itself, my main concern has been around stale exam location/time data.

• Stale data
  I haven't looked into this sufficiently but I'd want to be able to confirm whether McGill ever updates the exam time/details on the tentative schedule or the time/details/location on the final schedule which would invalidate the previously-exported exam schedule data. Any info you have on that would be very helpful. I'd recommend in general though to add a disclaimer to your site that the data being exported will not automatically stay up to date (some users might have the impression that what they export to their calendar will stay in sync with any updates on the mcgill site) and that users should always double check against the McGill exam pdf closer to their exam date.
  Along the same lines, having your site indicating the pdf from which it sourced the exam data would be nice for users with the same concern. Some thing like "The data exported was sourced from https://www.mcgill.ca/exams/files/exams/april_2024_final_schedulef8.pdf".
  If the backend could automatically pull and parse the latest pdf linked at https://www.mcgill.ca/exams/dates and update itself that would also be great.

Other than that concern, the following are feature requests that I think would make integration into the McGill enhanced extension more valuable.

• Url param support for export page
  I like that the search page supports url params (https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/data?name=comp%20204) so I can link from a user's schedule page in minerva to this site but ideally I would be able to link to a selection of multiple courses and allow the user to export all their courses without having to add them themselves
  https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/calendar?selection=comp204,comp206,math204

• Historical exam data:
  I'm not sure how consistently mcgill schedules exams every semester but if there are any patterns it would be interesting to be able to check the historical exam schedules for the courses you are planning on taking. As an example maybe comp250 exam conflicts most years with comp533 because it's not expected that there are any students taking both at the same time (but for whatever reason you are considering taking both). Even just being able to see whether a course has an in person exam or a take home in previous years would be useful I think. So this would be a request to be able to see historical exam schedule data for a single course or a selection of multiple courses (with an highlight of conflicts). With support for specifying the course selections via url param, I'd want to have the extension link to this from vsb. Something like
  https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/historical/calendar?selection=comp250,comp533

Let me know what you think and thanks for considering this

As a user, I was expecting the page content to react to year selector checkboxes, but after playing with the page, they're essentially only input for the search. If I search with W2024 selected (https://mcgillscheduler.vercel.app/historical?names=COMP%20330&years=w2024), then after seeing the output, I then also tick f2023, the results don't change. I need to search again and I also then need to retype my query because the search bar gets cleared. Would it be possible for the page to dynamically update the results based on the selected year tickboxes?