In message i, at
21:39:35 on Mon, 1 Nov 2010, Tom Anderson
remarked:
Seriously, though, have a go:

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk/planner

It's designed for tiny screens. I used to use it on my Sony Ericsson
T68i, which had a 101x80 screen. Even if you haven't got a data plan,
it generates so little traffic that it won't cost you much.

I gave it a try earlier today. The thing which defeated me was finding a
key to press with the "enter" or "send" function. So having got to the
right enquiry page, and typed in a station name, I was stranded with no
obvious way forward. (I'm sure it's obvious to others... please tell
me!)

Examination of my online bill shows that this lack of completed enquiry
cost me 30p.
--
Roland Perry

In message of Tue, 2 Nov 2010 20:54:47 in
uk.transport.london, Roland Perry writes
In message i, at
21:39:35 on Mon, 1 Nov 2010, Tom Anderson
remarked:
Seriously, though, have a go:

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk/planner

It's designed for tiny screens. I used to use it on my Sony Ericsson
T68i, which had a 101x80 screen. Even if you haven't got a data plan,
it generates so little traffic that it won't cost you much.

I gave it a try earlier today. The thing which defeated me was finding
a key to press with the "enter" or "send" function. So having got to
the right enquiry page, and typed in a station name, I was stranded
with no obvious way forward. (I'm sure it's obvious to others... please
tell me!)

Examination of my online bill shows that this lack of completed enquiry
cost me 30p.

Underneath "Full post code, stop or station",
On the left, I see a box to complete and to its right, there is a "Find"
button.
What did you see?
You can also connect from your regular PC to see how it should work.
--
Walter Briscoe

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 13:42:29 on Tue, 2 Nov
2010, Theo Markettos remarked:

The wifi option only wins if you're going to download a lot or need a
fast connection.

Wifi also wins where there isn't mobile coverage!

I suspect there are very few places where there is public wifi where there
is not 3G coverage.

tom

--
life finds a way

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Roland Perry wrote:

In message i, at 21:39:35
on Mon, 1 Nov 2010, Tom Anderson remarked:

Seriously, though, have a go:

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk/planner

It's designed for tiny screens. I used to use it on my Sony Ericsson
T68i, which had a 101x80 screen. Even if you haven't got a data plan,
it generates so little traffic that it won't cost you much.

I gave it a try earlier today. The thing which defeated me was finding a
key to press with the "enter" or "send" function. So having got to the
right enquiry page, and typed in a station name, I was stranded with no
obvious way forward. (I'm sure it's obvious to others... please tell
me!)

I tentatively guess that you have a couple of so-called 'soft keys'
underneath the screen, somewhere near your call and hang up buttons. Each
of those will correspond to some kind of action on the page; this should
be displayed on the screen. What kind of phone do you have?

Examination of my online bill shows that this lack of completed enquiry cost
me 30p.

Yeah, that's not ideal value.

tom

--
life finds a way

On Nov 2, 10:47*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Roland Perry wrote:

In message i, at 21:39:35
on Mon, 1 Nov 2010, Tom Anderson remarked:

Seriously, though, have a go:

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk/planner

It's designed for tiny screens. I used to use it on my Sony Ericsson
T68i, which had a 101x80 screen. Even if you haven't got a data plan,
it generates so little traffic that it won't cost you much.

I gave it a try earlier today. The thing which defeated me was finding a
key to press with the "enter" or "send" function. So having got to the
right enquiry page, and typed in a station name, I was stranded with no
obvious way forward. (I'm sure it's obvious to others... please tell
me!)

I tentatively guess that you have a couple of so-called 'soft keys'
underneath the screen, somewhere near your call and hang up buttons. Each
of those will correspond to some kind of action on the page; this should
be displayed on the screen. What kind of phone do you have?

Yes, this is a phone browser interface function as opposed to a wap
page design function, for want of a more precise way of describing it.
On my uber-basic Nokia the magic key in question is the big one in the
centre of the directional navigation keypad - when the text entry
field is the focus of the screen it says 'Edit', when in text entry
mode it says 'OK' (for when one is finished), and when the focus of
the screen is a link it says 'Select'.


Examination of my online bill shows that this lack of completed enquiry cost
me 30p.

Yeah, that's not ideal value.

Not ideal, no - one can improve it somewhat by turning off images in
the phone's browser, so less data gets sent and charged for, plus it
can speed things up a little (the TfL wapsite isn't heavy on images,
but every little counts - the NR wapsite however is free of images in
the first place).

Also, an obvious point perhaps but don't use the preset option on the
browser which directs one to the pre-installed home page (of the
network or phone manufacturer or whatever - though it's likely this
reconfigurable anyway), instead go straight to the TfL (or NR) wapsite
by entering the address first before connecting, or better set and
then use a bookmark - I've got bookmarks for a number of LDBs for NR
stations I use, for example.

If you do succeed, I suspect you'll find the wap version of the TfL
journey planner a little wanting - well, I do at least! It's doesn't
offer any options such as a way of selecting certain modes only (e.g.
bus only), or being able to to choose the time you want to travel - it
just assumes you want to travel now, and then in the results screen it
offers a '30 minute later' jump.

The timetables section (accessed on the TfL front page) can be useful
- again it assumes one is travelling immediately, but I've found can
be a good way of checking late (or night) bus times when one is
already out, also I think the same applies for getting some idea of
when the last Tube trains run (though see above w.r.t. the wap journey
planner's lack of options - it'd be good to be able to query these
directly, ditto first Tube trains).

Just to converge on another recent thread, whilst useful it can't
quite can't compare to calling up the TfL Travel Info line and
speaking to someone who's well versed in matters metro-
transportational (I only made use of it occasionally but each time
they provided very helpful advice, and I know many others who rate
them highly). Of course, I won't be doing this any more now that it'll
cost and arm and a leg from a mobile, which is a shame.

In message i, at
22:27:16 on Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Tom Anderson
remarked:
The wifi option only wins if you're going to download a lot or need
a fast connection.

Wifi also wins where there isn't mobile coverage!

I suspect there are very few places where there is public wifi where
there is not 3G coverage.

The tube platforms at Charing Cross (and others, if this gets rolled
out) are a rather obvious example!

As are many trains if (and I do say "if") they have usable wifi inside,
especially if it's a Voyager/Meridian style.

Meanwhile, the phone coverage (for data) inside one of the three
departure lounges at East Midlands Airport [don't mention the toner
cartridges] is sufficiently poor on both 3 and Vodafone that I sometimes
fall back to their T-Mobile hotspot.

Overseas, the balance rapidly swings towards wifi, simply because of the
cost and the lack of data roaming (for prepau dongles, anyway).
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 21:25:27 on Tue, 2
Nov 2010, Walter Briscoe remarked:
I gave it a try earlier today. The thing which defeated me was finding
a key to press with the "enter" or "send" function. So having got to
the right enquiry page, and typed in a station name, I was stranded
with no obvious way forward. (I'm sure it's obvious to others... please
tell me!)

Examination of my online bill shows that this lack of completed enquiry
cost me 30p.

The good news is that 30p is apparently for "unlimited web access all
day". So something good has come out of this episode; that's something I
will definitely use more often.

Underneath "Full post code, stop or station",
On the left, I see a box to complete and to its right, there is a "Find"
button.

What did you see?

Sorry, I was misremembering. I couldn't get the wap.tfl thing typed in
properly (screen too small without my glasses!) So I was using a
bookmark for wap.nationalrail.co.uk which I found to my surprise on the
phone (I must have tried it before).

On my PC, wap.nationalrail.co.uk auto-redirects to the wap.tfl site, but
on my phone ends up with a four-line menu, with no means to select which
menu line I want. The screen is almost completely a white background
with no soft-buttons showing.

But it's probably a red herring, because now I have managed to type in
the wap.tfl url.

That has the "Find" button and a soft-menu for "Select". And I can move
the focus to the "Find" button using the cursor keys, but this is
hampered by the fact that the "Find" button isn't highlighted in any
when when it has the focus on it (you can only tell because the focus is
missing elsewhere on the screen).

--
Roland Perry

In message i, at
22:47:58 on Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Tom Anderson
remarked:
I tentatively guess that you have a couple of so-called 'soft keys'
underneath the screen, somewhere near your call and hang up buttons.
Each of those will correspond to some kind of action on the page; this
should be displayed on the screen.

Those disappeared as soon as the page was displayed, all I had was a
mainly white plain background. I have supplied extra details in another
posting (I was looking at a different page).

What kind of phone do you have?

Sony Ericsson Cybershot. The soft keys are a touch-sensitive area at the
bottom of the screen, and in normal use a complete nightmare. They are
either very insensitive to touch (when I want to use them) or do random
things as a result of accidentally touching my face mid-call (when I
don't want them).
--
Roland Perry

On 1 Nov, 09:33, Roland Perry wrote:

Plenty of people use upmarket phones for that kind of thing; and the
iPad is at the larger end of the scale, I agree.

Getting a smartphone out of your pocket and getting an iPad out of
your bag are two different things, though. I would (and do where
signal is available on the subsurface lines) use my smartphone.

Neil