One of the summer tasks we have been dealing with has been to bring the frontend of our Web User Booking System (WUBS) up to date.  The original user interface dates back to when it was first developed (2005) and, while still more than adequate for the task, was starting to show it’s age.

After a short discussion in the team it was decided to follow a similar method to that which had been used for LORLS, specifically separating the front and back ends via a set of APIs.  The majority of the development effort was spent on the frontend as the core work on the APIs had already taken place to enable our mobile webApp to review, make and cancel bookings.

The key technologies behind the new frontend are HTML5 and JQuery.  Additional JQuery plugins used are DropKick, to provide the nice looking drop down lists, and Datepicker, for selecting dates from a calendar.