Geeks Talking About School Intranet Redesigns

3 Apr

On OASIS(Online Access to Student Information System) —

jon: this is a dramatisation:

me: yes?

jon: [SMU-CIT]: Crap! Mac users can use OASIS with some ease! Let’s spend 10 million dollars with IBM to make it less accessible!

me: what’s up with it now?

jon: same old same old in a sense. IE-only javascript links. try navigating and it stuffs whatever you want into a 150px high band.

me: i was thinking of writing a greasemonkey/creammonkey script for firefox and safari, to strip out the unnecessary gunk. tho explaining greasemonkey to people who don’t know how to control click and paste and manually do it might be a problem.

jon: i feel that your suggestion does not address the core issue, which my plan of overthrowing the CIT in a bloody coup involving slow-killing nerve gas will resolve

me: ten million dollars.

jon: i’d do something in rails for just 1 million.

me: i’d pay 30 million to have “37 signals”:http://www.37signals.com/ create my school intranet!

Talks of coups aside, there is a very real problem in the market for education applications. They’re mostly terrible and a nightmare for users. At this point in time to book school resources and bid for modules I have to go to one website; to participate in online class discussions I have to go to another (and within it, navigation hardly works); to check my exam results I have to go to another completely different website. Some of them homebrewed, some of them outsourced; all of them terrifyingly bad. So bad I think I’d rather listen to Linkin Park or Blackeyed Peas for 1 hour than use these applications for 5 minutes. What’s so difficult about creating a web app for institutions that _just works_ no matter what browser you’re using, and has a layout that looks like it was designed by a human being who actually uses it?

There has to be a better solution to all this other than “just use Internet Explorer”, which at present time, does seem to be their answer to everything. Like how when I asked someone there in my first year, for the IMAP settings to set up my email, they said, “use Outlook, configure for you already”. Me: “I don’t use Outlook. Gimme the damn IMAP settings.” Them: “Why don’t you use Outlook?” Me: “Coz I hate it. Gimme the damn IMAP settings.” Them: “Use Outlook!” Me: “I can’t.” Them: “Why?” Me: “I’m using Linux and Mac.” Them: “Use Windows then.” Me: (death stare). Them: “(scuffles to the back) What is IMAP ah?”

possibly related

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  • french affair
    there are many sucky apps out there. helpdesk agents too. IF you ever end up in an IT-related job, you'll prob become 10x disillusioned than u already are. (unless u have solid development teams - hard to find locally) take it from someone who has "been there and done that"...
  • gene
    LOL, this brings back memories, I was from the 2nd batch in SMU

    Back then the IT guys were even more clueless and lots of stuff was work in progress

    I wanted to use mozilla-thunderbird as my mail client, and when i asked for the IMAP server, they said only POP was available, so i *had* to use that, which was silly (with all the del/no del after dl-ing mails, and webmail)

    In the end I surfed around the intranet and found the imap server address n settings myself. To this day im still accessing the email via thunderbird-imap!
  • darkholme
    Two thoughts:

    1. Based on my own personal experiences (as a mac user), my main gripe with IT support people is not that they don't know/are unfamiliar with the mac/linux/non-windows platform but rather their attitude.

    I don't expect them necessarily to solve my IT problem, however, I do expect them to be:
    (i) a bit helpful in providing the information that I know I would need to solve the problem myself;
    (ii) honest enough to say when they don't know.

    By just changing the "use-our-system-or-go-away" attitude, everyone has a much better experience.

    2. What disappoints me the most about schools/large organisations is the wastage of funds to purchase systems that become white elephants. One classic example is one local university that spent a truckload of money on an enterprise content management system (interwoven). it is extremely powerful, unfortunately, no one knows how to use it. Hence even the IT unit uses it only for FTP.
  • yuch
    i share your gripe about the lack of good education applications. the ones out there are limited in function, disgustingly designed (i would like to say form over function, but some of them don't even have form to disguise the lack of function) and overrated, which would explain why you need a whole lot of them in order to fulfil a school's need comprehensively. and yet, schools pay big money for crappy software.

    and yes yes yes. IE is crap. i am forced to use IE because some sites don't work properly with firefox, and i hate it that it's critical stuff like online banking, and driving bookings, etc.
  • yj
    I didn't have any problem with class websites when studying in the US, though admittedly our computer labs having been entirely Mac or Linux boxes could have been a factor (and the general Silicon Valley anti-Microsoft sentiment). Starting NIE, though, the first thing I saw on the portal page were these:

    "This site best viewed in IE 5.0 with a 800 x 600 resolution."

    "1) This website requires a Java and JavaScript enabled browser and is best viewed with IE 5.x on Windows 95/98/NT.
    2) You will most likely experience problems on all other browsers and platforms, due in part to browser settings and infrastructure compatibility issues."

    The pain!

    It's not like there aren't good open-source education packages -- Moodle was decent, from the little I tried -- but people here just don't trust things they can't throw money at. Even the head of IT at the school I'm teaching at is enamoured with Microsoft solutions, despite being fully aware of Mac and Linux requirements (he'd pushed to setup half the computer labs to dual-boot Linux, so I don't think he's your average clueless admin).
  • hoooray to a fellow Mac User!!

    yeah i have indeed encountered this very stupid problem a few times especially while doing up my job resume. couldn't do it on my mac and i had to go to a Windows-operated computer to do it up when i needed it urgently.

    pretty irritating. cranks my nerves.
  • IMAP settings were asked from the IT desk; i'm not saying they all don't know anything. except that some of them honestly have no clue. like the ones i've had the displeasure of dealing with. it's fine if they would like other people to settle for what is given to them, but it's not fine if they make it difficult for the rest of us who choose otherwise to figure things out for ourselves, like this IT department was in previously not being forthcoming with simple things like mail settings.

    Point is, we're not asking for them to _support our browsers_. We're asking them not to lock them out by using unnecessarily IE-specific code. I look at the source and it's just so ridiculous how they need to use these bizarre code that locks out everyone else when the same thing (and I have authored my fair share of websites myself, in another life) can be done in 100 other simpler ways. It's as if they used FrontPage and decide to 'fuck all' if it's badly coded and pretty much unusable. (And the standards issue: IE, as you know, does not respect web standards. Code which is technically correct in every browser sometimes does not look the way it should on IE. Why do some IE users cry then when more and more sites are saying "if this looks weird on your browser, it's your problem; use a modern browser like Firefox".)

    There surely can't be only one way, i.e. Microsoft's. We choose our products because they work for us. Surely we shouldn't be coerced into adopting their products just because other people think they work "well enough". In using 'non-mainstream' products we already used to having to 'make the extra effort to use it'. What happens then when they make it impossible for us to even make that effort?

    By the way, this "struggle" has nothing to do with my usage of Apple products. Because in my decade of using Windows (and continuing to; I genuinely _don't mind it_ but just prefer the way other OSes and applications work), IE and Outlook were already the worst products one could have on that platform.
  • Su
    Haven't we heard this before?

    "And it doesn’t help for support for non-windows-ie-users that non-windows-ie-users can figure out what it is they need to do to get things done themselves, most of the time."

    To the OP: Yea, we all wish there has been a better solution but there isn't unless yours kindly wants to:-

    1) Write a new browser with code and what else not;
    2) Ensure (how? I also don't know la, coerce? beg? cajole?) that the rest of the world of applications agree with your new browser and it's code;

    For something which comes free (well at least it looks free with the OS), I personally feel that if you had decided to adopt a different browser (e.g. firefox) or email program etc etc, you definitely have to make the extra effort to want to use it.

    Honestly, I am not surprised that their response are, “use Outlook, configure for you already”. To the market out there, if something works, they use/adopt it.

    May I ask whom did you ask for your imap settings? I am sure an IT administrator is able to give you the correct settings.

    My friend, in your persistence in support for the non-mainstream (i.e. MAC) softwares, this is what you will face and will be facing in future.

    Before I end, let me put on my fireman suit and inform you that I would rather use Mozilla Firefox than I.E but my blog refuses to turn out the way it should in Firefox.
  • Bah. A familiar story. >.>

    And it doesn't help for support for non-windows-ie-users that non-windows-ie-users can figure out what it is they need to do to get things done themselves, most of the time.
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