For many months we have been working on some massive changes. Looking back on the history of JibberJobber I can’t remember a project that was bigger than this one. Although maybe I’m just forgetting the other big ones because they were so big I wanted to move on from them :p
Anyway, we are undergoing a change in the foundational code of JibberJobber that should do a few things. These are important to us because they give us more flexibility. They are important to you because you might notice some changes and think “huh, that is cool.” Hopefully they make your experience more delightful.
Better User Experience / User Interface
The reason we implemented this change was to update the look and feel of JibberJobber. What we hope you see in the next month or so is Phase I of this. We basically changed the entire UI architecture. In the test environment I can see some changes, but to be honest it’s not like it’s night and day. Sometimes I can’t tell what has changed. But here’s the cool thing: Since we are on a new infrastructure we’ll be able to make some really cool and noticeable changes easily and faster. JibberJobber launched in 2006 and a LOT has changed in online everything since then. We’re just upgrading what’s under the hood so we can easily make changes to the UX and UI later.
If you do notice some changes, congrats. I think they will be fairly subtle… or at least subtle for what I have in mind.
Faster… Just Plain Faster
Because we are using newer technologies things are loaded faster. In some cases, A LOT faster. We hope you notice this as you navigate through JibberJobber. And this is just another step to making things faster… we have some other optimizations planned. Hopefully you see the speed increases… but you might just see a website that is as fast as it should have been in the first place.
Will Be More Responsive
Responsive means the site “responds” to the screen or device you are on. We’ve had some issues where a smaller screen looks weird, or a bigger screen looks weird. The new UI changes should be fully optimized for devices of different sizes. This wasn’t a primary purpose of this massive update but it was definitely a nice little bonus.
Mobile is Changing
So we’ve had a love/hate relationship with mobile from the beginning. Actually, in the beginning there wasn’t really such a thing as mobile. Mobile phones in 2006 were… weak and slow. No one expected a good mobile experience, especially for a system as complex as JibberJobber, basically a CRM for job seekers. A few years later that changed and we eventually developed native mobile apps for both Android and Apple products. To be honest, they were a massive pain. The experience was different. But the real pain was submitting things to the Google or Apple stores. Seriously, a massive pain. We had to pay to be a member (or whatever), which was nominal but lame. When we submitted our app they would review it, sometimes taking weeks to get back to us. Many times they would kick it back for some super minor reason, only delaying us updating the app. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is the native mobile experience we delivered was painful for everyone… our users and my developers and me.
I found out that the new UI changes would take us in a whole new direction. I won’t go into the technical aspects of it here but basically UI has advanced to the point where it is closer and closer to replacing what native apps could and should do. It’s supposedly the future of mobile. Once we go live with these new changes we’ll retire the native apps, and you should have a more streamlined JibberJobber experience with an updated mobile experience. I’m really hopeful that this is the right direction. If it is I’ll be more than happy to let my accounts on the mobile app delivery services lapse.
Problems?
We’ve been testing this for months. We’ve been testing with so many different scenarios and technologies and browsers and devices it makes my head spin. Our QA objectives are to find any issues before you do, but that is kind of impossible. We have so many smart, clever users that you somehow find things we didn’t even conceptualize. If you have ANY issues after we release, please let us know. There’s a Contact Us link at the bottom of every page… we want to hear from you.
We watch everything you report because we realize once there is an issue reported by one person it’s only a matter of time before everyone sees it. We try to find and fix as soon as possible so no one notices. Anything you find, send it in, no matter how small it seems. We’ll be watching for your messages.
THANK YOU
JibberJobber launched in May of 2006 with some really modest goals. The mission, though, was to help job seekers around the world with one part of their job search: staying organized, and tracking jobs and contacts and follow up.
We’ve had thousands of people use JibberJobber since 2006. We’ve been a part of many job searches. And my hope is we’ve been a part of providing some calm and peace to an otherwise crazy time in your life. Thank you for using JibberJobber, for upgrading, and for telling your friends about us.