With one command line, on Nov. 16, senior and lead Ion developer James Woglom released Ion, bringing an end to the 8 year era of Iodine. The project started in Woglom’s freshman year with 2015 graduate Ethan Lowman. While improving on Iodine to make work for the eighth period office easier, the two came upon a realization.

“The functionality that the eighth period office wanted to be changed, we couldn’t implement well in Iodine, and it didn’t work well in mobile browsers,” Woglom said.

In addition, Iodine caused problems that weren’t only apparent to administration, but also the Jefferson community. The file center crashed and was not user-friendly, overriding information for activities was difficult, and Iodine could not handle many people using it at once, evident especially during lunch and before eighth periods.

“Students were checking what they had signed up for, the teachers were trying to take attendance, and everything came to a halt,” students activity director, Joan Burch, said, “So rather than rewrite Iodine, it was better to redesign the whole program – start anew with newer technology.”

The launch of Ion also included features absent from Iodine. The most prominent is the design. Ion uses responsive design which allows it to fit to various screen sizes making it compatible with mobile devices. The addition of the banner along the top of the screen in the eighth period widget makes switching between blocks for sign-up easier and tags next to activities provides information such as activities that should only be attended one block and 48-hour sign-ups, allowing students to know of it further than two days in advance. Additionally, requesting posts on the Intranet homepage is now more accessible with the implementation of a form on the Ion homepage. “I’ve added an events module, which is a whole new feature. Students will be able to add events that going on all throughout TJ, and other students will be able to see them,” Woglom said.

 Jefferson students can also look forward to old features from Iodine. “Most of the reason for why there isn’t something in Iodine in Ion right now is just for lack of time. A future functionality might be to add themes.”

As Woglom’s senior research lab, Ion will continue to improve throughout the year. “It was very satisfying when it was able to launch,” Woglom said, “I’ve enjoyed it and grown a lot as a programmer.”