Development
UI Design
Booking App. Engineering a robust booking application.
I fondly refer to this project as my "little baby." It’s a venture that I've been nurturing since I first embarked on my journey in software development. Originally conceived as a simple tool to help my family coordinate stays at our summer house, it has grown into an ongoing project where I continually aim to enhance the application and deepen my understanding of development.
An iPad showing the first version of the booking platform
The first version
When I began this project in 2019, my experience with frontend development was quite basic, limited to HTML and CSS—I had just completed an advanced CSS course. Knowing that this project would demand more, I started searching for pre-made booking plugins for platforms like WordPress or plain HTML. I found a few options, but they were either too complex or too costly for what I envisioned. Determined to build something tailored to our needs, I opted to create a booking form from scratch. Guided by an online tutorial, I learned how to read and write data to a text file using PHP and display it on the website. While it wasn't the most elegant solution, it served its purpose for a first attempt, and I saw plenty of room for future improvements.
Upgrading to React and Enhancing Functionalities
In 2021, I decided it was time to significantly upgrade the application by rebuilding it from the ground up using React and Firebase for data storage. This shift not only allowed me to separate the data from the code but also introduced the ability for users to edit and delete their bookings—features that were not available in the initial version.
Being passionate about design, I dedicated considerable effort to crafting a user experience and interface that felt intuitive and app-like. I incorporated features such as a calendar view and user roles to simplify the management and viewing of bookings for different purposes.