WORK START
COMPLETE SYSTEM
NURIN AZYYATI KAMILIZAHRI
UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA PAHANG
TABLE OF CONTENT
TOC o “1-4” h z u
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW2.1Background of Study22.2Studies on existing system22.2.1Comparison on User Interface Design32.3Comparison on Features52.3.1Features of TrackmyPlants webpage52.3.2Features of Cronometer webpage62.3.3Features of Trello webpage72.3.4Outcome of comparison on existing system82.4Study on suitable programming language11
2.4.1Comparison on the advantages of PHP over ASP.net11
2.4.2Outcome of study on suitable programming language12
2.5Conclusion12
LITERATURE REVIEW
BACKGROUND OF STUDY
This chapter discuss the literature review which three existing systems will be compared.
The comparison will help to identify problem that occurred in the existing system and will help to identify the best approach to develop the Work Start Complete system. There exist some work progress system but those systems are not accessible for Aito Firework company to use as it is not specifically for managing firework projects. In this literature review, three existing systems are being compared for their work progress system.
The systems are TrackmyPlants, Cronometer, and Trello. There are a lot of differences between the system of these webpages in terms of advantages, disadvantages, similarities, weaknesses, and strengths of the system. Besides, comparison on programming language used had also been made.
STUDIES ON EXISTING SYSTEM
TrackmyPlants is a web-based system where user can monitor their plants and record the growing result systematically. This system is developed for growers who wanted to track the life cycle and productivity of their plants. The system has very basic interfaces providing what is necessary for planting, moving, and harvesting products. The system designed is not complicated as the project can be accomplished with just a few clicks without the need to wait for Flash or Java applications to load.
Cronometer is a tracking system that can track nutrition intake, body fitness and provide data for body health. This system will automatically calculates and displays users metabolic rate as user need to enter and save their personal information such as gender, weight, and height. The system is suitable for those who tend to maintain a healthy lifestyle and for those who go on a diet. It has its advantage where user will be notified through email about the data on calories eaten or calories burned for 7, 14, or 30 days. Besides, this web-based system is free and flexible to use.
Trello is one of the most popular task management software which is free to use. Trello also accessible on mobile applications. This system allows users to organize all tasks and projects in one place. The target users are individuals and teams that want to keep their projects organized. Also, Trello is targeted to companies of all sizes from all industries. It has its advantage where the user can set the appearance of data, reports, and projects. Besides, it can perform information backups, information retrieval and restore the database by just clicking a button. It also can import and export information from files. Trello has a feature of uploading documents, reports and also can send emails from this system. It also conducts operations such as delete, add new, update and search function.
COMPARISON ON USER INTERFACE DESIGN
Each of the systems has its own uniqueness in their user interface design like the arrangements of the elements and navigation components. At first sight, the interface arrangement of website TrackmyPlants is the simplest compared to the other two.
The TrackmyPlants websites interface used a lot of texts as it shows the user how to use the system. However, the other two website page are more in a very orderly arrangement from their overall layout and visual appearance. These two webpages attract users more than the TrackmyPlants webpage as the design of the interface is more understandable. In designing the interface, a simple and orderly arrangement should be applied so that users able to look for the information that they really need rather than looking at the design.
In terms of colour used, Trello and TrackmyPlants website used blue color as their main colour of the page. Blue represents comfort, clarity, calm, trust, integrity, and reliable. Cronometer website used orange color as it represents one of the nutritious fruit which is tomato. Orange colour tend to look warm, determination and success. In designing a webpage, the colour chosen is very important as it will directly tell users on what products the webpage intends to convey. The web design can be colourful but must consider the colour of other objects or elements as it needs to harmonize well with colours of other existing objects and interior decorations.
The design for all the websites in terms of the font type and size are consistent. The same font type is used for all pages on each website. As most websites rely on text to deliver their message or objective, font type and size are very important in order to enhance the level of readability for users. By picking the right font, will give a huge impact on the look of the web design. Some of the elements that must be considered in choosing the right font is the object or brands personality need to match. Understanding the object or brands personality is the key in order to choose the right font used for the brand. For example, the Trello website uses Helvetica font type as it is always been used in business or project websites.
The arrangement of the elements and contents in TrackmyPlants webpage is messier as all the information is loaded in one page. As for the other two websites, their main page only contains important information for the user to understand what the system is all about. Most important about the consistency in web designing is that the navigation bar. All the webpage remain the navigation bar on the same location in every page. It is a good practice to maintain the navigation bar at the same spot so that navigation can be done easily.
Besides, the layout of the web page must be considered when developing a system. Users should not have to figure out how the layout works. The lesser columns used in the web page is better in order to satisfy the simplicity. All the compared websites use a similar approach in designing their layout as there are no columns used. All three websites are using such a layout which has a navigation bar at the top of each page and the most top section is the banner consists of name of the system. Following is the layout design for the three compared website which has a similarity.
Figure 2.1 Layout for compared 3 existing websites
COMPARISON ON FEATURES
FEATURES OF TRACKMYPLANTS WEBPAGE
The TrackmyPlants webpage contains a brief introduction to the system objective. This system gives users the idea on how to monitor the progression as steps to track the growing plants had been shown. There is a section where the chart shows the recorded events for each plant that been made. This allows user to track whether the event is up-to-date according to the plan.
There is also a section where growers can refer to all the information or resources about planting. The information provided is very useful as it guides growers to make the right decision on every event involved. The information provides also helps in solving the problem that occurs during the planting process. Apart from that, this webpage applies two-way communication as users can share their growing experiences with others that grow the same variety or species. This will helps in more understanding of managing or tracking the progress of the plants growth rate.
Another section in the TrackmyPlants webpage will bring users to the plant list where users can view a list of all the plants and determine which ones should be harvest first. This section is very important for growers to choose the most compatible or healthy plant to be harvest. It is very important as it can help to minimize the number of damaged plants being harvested. Not all plants are readily to be harvest as plants need to meet the standard set of planting schemes. Besides, in the harvest section, users will know how long it takes to grow the planted plants as it will track the progression from start to finish.
FEATURES OF CRONOMETER WEBPAGE
Cronometer is a free nutrition tracking application that can use on a laptop via the webpage or through mobile applications for iOS and Android. This application has a ton of features that make it easy to view and analyze all the data. This application particularly suitable for those looking to achieve their health and fitness goals. Users need to enter their bodys type details such as height and weight and the system will calculate the metabolic rate and body mass index. This application will also track everything from the daily caloric intake. Users can set goals and specific micronutrient targets required by the body. Users can even customize the daily targets for the micronutrients that are important. Apart from that, user can determine whether the target to loss excess body weight and how much the loss is accomplished or not by the calculation on the users optimal weight loss or gain.
Next, Cronometer can count the calories consumed by user. Based on the weight goal, the system will provide ideas and tells user whether need to burn more calories or eat more foods. Besides, this system has an activity tracker where users can insert exercise involved and its duration to track how much calories loss after the exercise. The analysis tool also will help in visualizing the progress towards better health and user can identify areas to improve their diet. This data can be shared with healthcare professionals with the report feature or even share the data directly with them.
Last but not least, Cronometer allows users to access free or paid for gold version which enables users to many more features. The difference between free version and gold version is activity tracking. The free version is limited to two categories only which are resistance and circuit training. The gold version unlocks more features such as the ability to invite other users as friends and custom foods and recipes with them. This is a great way for families or partners to stick to the same meal plan. Besides, users can also make corrections of any incorrect or wrong information regarding various products on the webpage. Thus, Cronometer offers many useful features that can help to plan diet easily and to keep track of the calorie intake. It is really a great application for those looking to achieve fitness goals and a healthy lifestyle.
FEATURES OF TRELLO WEB PAGE
Trello contains board in which the board is made up of lists that represent a workflow. Each list has cards on it which represent a task and can hold much information for that task. Users can create a new task for the board by adding a card and adding title to it. Click the card to open up the card back where user can add more information to it. The card can be edited on the card back. For instance, user can change the title of the card to make it more informative. Also, user can add description to the card to provide more details on what the card is all about. Apart from that, user can add checklist to the card in order to create sub tasks or steps. Members of the team to that particular card can be added to assign them the task. When members are added to a card they will receive a notification from Trello itself and by email.
Trello has a feature where users can add due date to the card to inform everyone things need to get done before the deadlines. By adding labels to cards will help the user to filter the board more effectively and can act as references in the future. If there is mentioned one of the board members in the comment section on cards, the member will receive a notification. Also, users can subscribe if wanted to always keep track of the progress of the card. This way will make user to receive notifications for any actions that occur on the card.
As a task progress from start to finish, cards can be moved across lists by clicking and dragging them to a different list. Besides, there is members section at the board’s sidebar of the page which displays all the board members. The members with a blue icon on their profile picture are the board admins where they can set permissions for the board. Users can add new members to the board by clicking the add members button and then searching for them by either their username or email address. If user wants to add someone that is not a member of Trello, user can enter their email address and an invitation to sign up will be sent by email. After that, user can add members to cards by dragging the profile picture from the members section and dropping it onto a card. The activity feed for the board shows all the actions that have occurred on the board since the board was created.
The power-ups board level features provide extra functionality on board such as calendar view and card voting. Stickers are also can be added to a card for status update or just for fun. The card filters allow user to focus on cards by the combination of their labels members, due dates or keywords. Instead of deleting cards and lists, users can archive the cards so that it can easily be referenced or returned to the board in the future. Lastly, the board’s menu is where user can find all of the board level settings and features whereby only board admins can set all the permission for the board.
OUTCOME OF COMPARISON ON EXISTING SYSTEM
Based on the comparison from the three existing systems, each of their functionality and features has been summarized into a table as shown below.
System TrackmyPlants Cronometer Trello
Type of application Web-based Web-based and mobile applications Web-based and mobile applications
Type of database None Oracle MongoDB
Feature of generate report Visualize in a chart Visualize in a graph Visualize in many types of visual tools such as graph, pie chart and Gantt chart
Sign up or login function Provide Provide Provide
Notify the progress status Not Provide Provide via email Provide via web and email
Have tracking progression or not Yes Yes Yes
Allow two-way communication Available within growers Available for gold version user only Available within admin and members of board
The features provided by all the three existing systems is almost the same. All three of them contain the register function for new user to register their personal details and create their own account before using the system. Each of the system also provides track events from start to finish. Apart from that, there are some differences between the three systems where not all application will notify their user on the progress status. Unlike TrackmyPlants, the user of Trello will be notify through the web or email if there are changes on certain cards. This will help the user to always keep track of the task. Trello got many features compared to the other two in which Trello can visualize the progression in various ways compared to TrackmyPlants and Cronometer.
Figure 2.2 Screenshot of TrackmyPlants system
Figure 2.3 Screenshot of Cronometer system
Figure 2.4 Screenshot of Trello system
STUDY ON SUITABLE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
Currently, there are many programming languages that can be used to develop a web-based system. Comparison had been done on the programming languages that often been used in web-based system development. PHP and ASP.net has been chosen to identify which would be the most suitable programming language to be used.
COMPARISON ON THE ADVANTAGES OF PHP OVER ASP.NET
According to the author named Jamsheer K (2017) from the website he stated that there are many differences between these two programming languages which are PHP and ASP.net. The differences stated in the webpage are summarized into a table as follows.
PHP FACTORS ASP.NET
Server-side scripting language TYPE Web application framework
Freely available (Open source) COST Licensing cost (Microsoft product require user to pay)
Many available FRAMEWORKS Standard framework
Slower for desktop application SPEED Fast enough for desktop application
Using C language CODING Support languages such as C# and VB.NET etc
Connection to MySql is free DATABASE MsSql require user to pay
Developers from around the world since its open source SUPPORT AND RESOURCES Limited skills of developers from Microsoft only
Very good SECURITY Good
Multi-platform (can run on any platform) PLATFORM Single platform (run only on Windows)
Great PERFORMANCE Poor
Scales very well SCALABILITY Sometimes can be difficult to scale
Independent EDITORS AND TOOLS IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio
Google.com and Facebook.com SITE EXAMPLE Msn.com (owned by Microsoft)
OUTCOME OF STUDY ON SUITABLE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
Based on the table above, the PHP has more advantages compared to ASP.net as PHP and MySql are both free to use while ASP.net with MsSql requires user to pay. There are many examples of codes and tutorials for PHP compared to ASP.net as the PHP is older than ASP.net. As PHP is an open-source programming language, users can ask for help from many developers from all over the world which means resources or guides for the PHP development can be easily obtained.
PHP is an independent platform which can run on many operating systems. This is because PHP is supported by a lot of operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and most varieties of Unix. ASP.net only supported by Windows. Currently, many websites are using PHP as well as MySql for their database. Only certain websites use ASP.net and most of it is owned by Microsoft. Besides, PHP is easy to use as it contains many special features and functions needed to create a dynamic web page. Thus, with all the capabilities in using PHP, it is preferable to use PHP to create websites application.
CONCLUSION ON STUDIES
After all the comparison made on the three existing system, the features, user interface design and programming language for the Work Start Complete System has been chosen. Thus, the development of the system will be made as soon as possible after all the basic requirements have been identified.