Dashboard Widgets
Welcome to our new widget page where we will be distributing a range of Dashboard widgets for Mac OS X Tiger. For more information about Tiger and Dashboard have a look around Apple's Dashboard feature page.
Localised widgets
We're really impressed with Dashboard and the possibilities that it brings to Mac OS X. We want to provide excellent universal widgets but we are going to concentrate on UK specific ones to make sure that us Brits aren't missing out on all the fun over this side of the Atlantic! We're currently developing quite a few widgets for some UK based sites, the Macworld UK widget was the first joint-production (see Macworld's widget page) and we'll hopefully have some new ones out soon. We're also on the look out for a graphic designer who would be interested in doing a bit of design work for some widgets (not our strong point!), so if you're interested drop us an email. Similarly if you have any great widget ideas, or you see a widget that you would like adapted for the UK get in touch, the relevant email address is: widgets@themacplace.co.uk.
UK Train Timetables
Our first widget provides a quick and easy way to access the information provided by National Rail Enquiries Online. We've tried to keep the interface as simple as possible and most options are fairly easy to understand. You can specify a station to watch (to see all arrivals and departures for that station) or you can watch a specific journey (eg Darlingtion to London Kings Cross). This widget saves your preferences, refreshes every 2 minutes (the maximum allowed by National Rail) and properly sleeps when the Dashboard layer is hidden (so it only uses your network and processor when you can see it). As well as seeing the timetabled time the widget also updates the expected time for trains and highlights late-running trains in red. This widget is freeware so download and enjoy!
Installation Instructions
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
BETA VERSION (27th August 2006) - Version 1.4b is now available and works with nationalrail.co.uk's new layout. We haven't had too much time to test this one, it seems to work OK but we'll be checking it out and releasing the official 1.4 update as soon as we're sure there's no major issues. If you find any bugs please let us know! Thanks for all the emails letting us know that the widget had stopped working after the site update.
Download UK Train Timetables Widget v.1.4b (BETA) (.zip Archive - 140KB)
How to Uninstall
Just remove the widget from the /Library/Widgets/ folder in your home folder.
Using the widget
Because this widget accesses a website the first time that you run it it will ask for permission to access the internet. The widget solely uses the internet to scrape the National Rail website, no other information is collected or sent. If you want to use the widget you'll have to click yes to this warning. Once the widget has loaded you will be presented with the config screen. To watch a station (arrivals and departures) start typing the station name into the to field. You can type any part of the name and don't have to use the station short-code name. The station name is searched for as you type. Select the station that you want, leave the bottom search box saying "Anywhere" and click on the "Display Timetables" button. Because of space restrictions the widget will only show up to 6 arrivals and departures. If you click off the "Limit no. of journeys (no scroll bar)" option on the configuration side the widget will show all available journeys for a station but you may have some scroll bars if there are a lot of journeys.
To watch a particular journey go back to the "Configure" side of the widget and enter the desired route using the To and From search boxes. Clicking "Display Timetables" will then only show you trains for that particular route. This version will show up to 12 results, and again deselecting the "Limit no. of journeys (no scroll bar)" will allow for more results where available at the expense of scroll bars.
Disclaimer
This widget is provided as is and without warranty. The times that it reports should be accurate (and have been throughout testing) but it relies on the National Rail website for information which is something we have no control over.
Version History
v1.0 - Initial Release
v1.1 - Fixed circular route bug (thanks to David Fanning for finding that one). Cosmetic changes and added working link.
v1.2 - Major search change (uses locally cached list of stations) which fixes problems with nationalrail.co.uk update and searches for stations under 3 letters.
v1.3 - Fixed parser after another change to the nationalrail.co.uk site. Thanks to everyone who reported the problem.