Much much more still to come!

As promised, here is a sneak peak of the new home screen for the next web app upgrade. So with less rambling and more action:

Spotted a problem yet?

I haven’t exactly  decided on a colour scheme yet.. So lets throw it open to you guys, and have a poll:

-bok

A minor server side improvement today, in light of the network being pretty much shutdown – we now handle line suspensions in a much more obvious manner.

So if you’re looking at train results for a single line that is suspended, you’ll get a nice big red message letting you know that you’re stuck at the pub (shame really) for a while longer. For multi-line lookups we’ll flag affected services in red – just like we do with known cancellations – so that you know to check the notices.

These are server-side improvements, so nothing needs to be updated on your end

-bok

In building the Native version of iTransit we dramatically increased the scope of information that we want to make available. Primary amongst that is disruptions, delays and cancellations.

Why? Well for the majority of our regular users, you only ever load up iTransit when you deviate from your routine. Using me personally as an example, I’m pretty sure I have my morning and afternoon timetables memorised, so I only really need to know when things aren’t what I’m expecting.

To a degree, iTransit does this now – you can check the cancellations for your train, but more often than not it’s not reported, or delayed but not cancelled. If you’re a regular user you’ve probably subscribed to the Connex SMS feed too.

So in expanding our focus and researching the kind of information that people are looking for, we’ve decided to make sure that things like service changes, cancellations and even delays are base pieces of information that are vital to supporting any times we display. We’re doing so, but getting that sort of information into iTransit in a simple way has so far not been an easy task (and it needs to be simple – if it takes 15 minutes to generate changes I’ll get sick of updating it really fast) but we are making progress.

Blah blah blah, how does this affect me?

It dictates a few changes to what we’re delivering, but because things are developed in parallel it shouldn’t affect things too much, just means that you will see a few new things sooner than you might otherwise had.

New version of the Web Application

You will probably see this first as it’s used as the testing/verification platform for all new datas. If you’re nice to me I might even post some screenshots of the redesign.

A Dashboard Widget

Your favourite transit data in a widget! We’ll probably support other widget/gadget platforms eventually, but we work/live in our Macs so initial support goes there. This is mainly so that I can just hit F12 as I walk past my iMac on the way out and not have to squint at my iPhone screen because I’ve forgotten to turn the brightness back up and haven’t had my coffee yet

Native iPhone Application

We know you want it! We want it too. There’s no timeframe for delivering this at the moment; near enough just isn’t good enough as far as we’re concerned, so we’re not going to release something until we’re happy with it, and with the additions of the delays and disruptions as core information it’s more important than ever that we get the information display right.

There will still be two versions of the Native Application. The basic free version, and a paid version with a bunch more bells and whistles. Both will be fully usable with no gimping/trials/missing data. The paid version will be targeted at more regular users with more things you’ll want to use regularly.

There’s no clear separation between the two editions yet. We haven’t drawn a line in the sand as to which features go into which, so we’re happy to accept your suggestions with open ears.

That would probably suffice as too much for you to read for today

-bok

The goal for this blog is purely to be an information resource for the development and deployment of iTransit.

So anything we’re doing, anything we’re thinking of doing, etc.

Right now we’re hammering out the plan for release of several new things, not necessarily in this order:

• New version of the web application
• A Mac OS X Dashboard widget (other widget platforms immediately thereafter)
• An of course, a Native iPhone Application

There’s a bit of work there, and it’s worth noting here the extra effort (and time) going into making the backend usable. We’ll have full support for trackwork/service changes in all supported modes of transport, so making sure that being able to generate and modify timetables easily to reflect changes is vital – if its too much effort to update then it just won’t get done and we lose a valuable piece of information.

We’re going to take a piece from the Blizzard playbook though and not announce a release date until I’m sure it’s ready. We’ve just not been happy with the quality of what we have right now, so we’ll keep it to ourselves for now.

Here somewhere too you will see a signup for the beta testing, as we get closer to that. For those people that have already emailed/sent feedback about being a beta tester you don’t need to do so again, you’re already on the list

Anyway, back to it.

-bok