I have hit an important milestone in the project to build a dating app for shelter animals. I have completely finished a page in the website that we are building. Wait, I know what you are thinking, you are 5 weeks in and you only finished a page now, well my answer is yes and no. My definition of completely done might be a little different from yours, my definition means that I don’t need to work on that specific page or any page related to it. Let me explain.

So the page in question is the Pet Browser Page. This page is mainly there to allow the user to view all available shelter pets. This page allows for filtering of the content shown through the form located in the sidebar, it will also allow for the user to be redirected to a webpage with more information about said pet through a simple click of a button. Of course, for the page to be populated with pets, a form needs to be created so that the Shelter accounts (the ones who post about available pets) can add pets to the website. I have built that, as well as a form where the Shelter accounts can edit the information if there is a need to update the pet information. Basically I have built out and connected to the back-end everything that is needed to run the Pet Browser Page.

Now that I have finished that, I think we are halfway there. Now all that is left is the actual ability for the Adopters to be able to adopt, and to build that out. Already, a teammate of mine is working on that, and through a meeting earlier this week, we have decided that I will also help with that, mostly the way for an Adopter to manage all their current Pet Adoption applications. Due to the fact that I am more comfortable with React, I think this part of the process will be faster than it took me to build the Pet Browser Page, so expect an update soon with the headline, “We are done with everything needed for our website to work”.

Also one more concern that I have is the CSS needed for the website to look good. My CSS skills are non-existent and I have stressed that to my teammates multiple times, so I expect during that time, I will be only making minor contributions. I will probably be working on making the website feel alive and responsive by giving feedback on the process of everything going on. Examples that come off the top of my head include, showing a loading sign, when images or website is loading and is waiting on back-end. Also communicating back to the user on the status of their actions such as submission of forms. Maybe loading stuff in parallel, or lazy loading for images, hmmmmm. It all depends on how much time there is left.

Basically rather than on CSS, I will be focused on the making the website usable.