Development of a Job Searching Application

General Overview

Client is a leading Online Job Search Portal in UK. Client was looking develop a Mobile App with the similar functionalities as given into their job search portal. We pitched to the client and selected to develop mobile app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.

Project Overview

The application includes the following functionality and feature sets:

• Searching & browsing of all job listings
• Single sign-on login functionality, using existing web portal accounts
• Viewing of specific job details
• Applying for jobs directly from the app, using your CV’s uploaded via the website
• Favorite a job listing for future reference
• Shortlist a job listing, to come back and review/apply for later
• View and edit user’s account details
• Feedback on anything including app bugs
• JSON Web Service, sync'ing data with the main job search website database

Our Solution

We followed a hybrid approach, using a HTML5 / CSS3 / jQuery / Phonegap technology stack, which was chosen to support one codebase that could be easily deployed across multiple platforms – iOS, Android, Blackberry. This method also ensured that development costs matched the client’s budget.

Phonegap is a very popular approach that many clients push for when considering the development of their apps, as ‘in theory’ it allows us to develop one codebase that can be deployed across multiple platforms. In reality this is not always the case because when dealing with so many different devices and operating systems like Blackberry 6 or 7 vs Android vs iOS 4 or 5, each device/OS has different strengths/weaknesses and often the development needs to consider using different technologies in order to achieve the best result for each device/OS. Our codebase was structured as follows:

• Base Codebase – (iOS / Android)
• BB07 – (Blackberry 6 & 7)
• BB10 – (Blackberry 10)

For Blackberry 6 & 7, we also had to swap out the use of jQuery for a lighter JavaScript library called

Zepto.js, as these lower Blackberry devices did not have the memory to handle this

Technology

• HTML5 / CSS
• jQuery
• AJAX / JSON
• iOS, Android, Blackberry 6+ support
• Eclipse IDE
• Phonegap (Apache Cordova)
• js
• Bootstrap

Benefits

• Mobile app on multiple platforms gives advantage of tapping into greater market potential.
• Maximum ROI
• Enhanced end-user experiences.