Sorry, I couldn’t resist the title pun!
Did you know that you can add a Transferology shortcut icon to your mobile device’s home screen? Here’s how. (If you want to understand our rationale for delivering Transferology as a web application and not as a mobile application through the Apple or Android application storefronts, read the bottom third of this article.)
On an Apple/iOS device:
1. Open a browser (e.g. Safari) and navigate to www.transferology.com.
2. Once there, look for the icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like a box with an arrow pointing up/out of it. Touch that icon.
3. Another menu will pop up in which there is an icon showing a box/button with a plus sign in it and the text “Add to Home Screen.” Touch that icon.
4. Finally, choose “Add” from the top right of the following screen. This will place the icon on your home screen.
On an Android Device
1. Browse to www.transferology.com and bookmark it.
2. From the device’s home screen, where you would like the icon to be located, long-press (press and hold in an unoccupied space for about 2 seconds).
3. From the “Add to Home Screen” menu that pops up, select “Shortcuts” and then “Bookmark.”
4. Select the Transferology bookmark, then return to your home screen. The icon will be there.
Here is a quick video tutorial: add a Transferology icon to an Android Phone. (In case you are wondering, that’s Judi’s daughter and grandson on the home screen! You may have talked to Judi if you have used CollegeSource Online or TES tech support.)
But Why No “App?”
There are three good reasons why we have chosen to deliver Transferology as a web application rather than a mobile device application.
1. Mobile apps are specific to each environment/device. To make an Apple and Android app (as well as apps for any other mobile operating system) we would have to design, register, and test multiple (derivative) apps, one for each operating system, as well as configure and test them for all the popular screen sizes and resolutions. Designing and redesigning the same mobile app multiple times is a high-resources proposition. Even so, we would have gone that route if the benefits were worth the time, energy, and cost of development.
2. Bootstrap (a web design tool used in creating Transferology) is already completely reactive to mobile platforms. Bootstrap allows us to tweak the Transferology interface to behave appropriately, given various size constraints. Rather than explaining what this means, it’s easiest to see it for yourself by performing a simple experiment: open Transferology in a browser window and then resize that window to iPad and/or phone size and watch what happens. (Or you can just open it on your mobile device.)
3. Transferology is dependent on Internet connectivity. Transferology will only work on a device when it is connected to the Internet. (We can’t load 8+ million equivalencies on your phone and search them efficiently.) And if a device is connected to the Internet, then it can use Transferology through its web browser; there is no need for a mobile app.
For the above reasons, the only benefit we would achieve with a true mobile device application is the marketing opportunity of having it appear in various “app stores.” Even if we had made the considerable effort to deliver it as a mobile app, it wouldn’t look or work any better. Actually, it would be worse. Performance on a small device could be sluggish, updates would be slow in coming (as apps and their updates have to travel through the submission/vetting process of any online storefront), and there would be no real way to ensure that the user experience is the same on all devices.
CollegeSource will not be building mobile apps for Apple and Android in the foreseeable future. We believe that reactive web technology, which is completely functional on every mobile device without customization, is the way to go. Using reactive technology allows us to invest in one iteration of each product and to bring various components of it, if not the whole application, to a mobile device without investing in alternate designs. We expect that we will find more uses for this technology in the future, as we explore the need for, and utility of, transfer evaluation, audits, and planning in mobile environments.
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