Some info: I'm 4th year software engineering student, I know C/C++, Java, Ruby, Haskell, Prolog, Lisp, some SQL. I don't know much about web application but I'm very good at learning a new language and tools.
Description: I'm trying to develop an schedule making tool that'll allow small business owners to easily and efficiently create work schedules.
Some general feature requirements: 1) It'll have two viewing mode, day and week. Day view will be a graphic representation and week view will be texts. Both must be printable. 2) Must support multiple businesses and for each business has a manager and employees who can check their schedules. 3) All of this over the internet.
Since I do not know much about web application, I need your help getting started. Some specific questions I have right now is: 1) What tool should I use to design the GUI of the application. It has to work in a browser. 2) Will JavaScript and PHP be enough to display the application and do underlying calculations? 3) Is there any good books out there that'll help me get through this project. 4) It'll be free to use but should I make this app open source?
I appreciate your time and willingness to help others.
Q1: I'd attempt to use HTML and jQuery (a very good JavaScript library) for the design. Q2: JavaScript is extremely slow at "proper" calculations. I'd use PHP and jQuery AJAX for communicating with the server. Q3: I've got the book: "Learning PHP, MySQL and JavaScript", I think it is the perfect reference for PHP, MySQL and javascript.
I think that this will be an extraordinarily complicated project, I would just use Google Calender.