All aboard the Next Train Ireland Beta!

smackyB

Hi guys, some of you may be familiar with an app I wrote called Next Train Ireland which shows realtime and timetabled train information from Irish Rail. While it works reasonably well the design is looking a bit tired and code behind it is awful so I set about rewriting it from scratch in my free time.

As it's a fairly major overhaul I'm doing a beta release before pushing it out to everyone. Users of the free app can join the beta here and those who have (kindly!) bought the paid version can join the beta here.

Some highlights of this release:

- Complete UI overhaul
- Much improved and more detailed journey planner
- Added Android Wear functionality
- More reliable loading and better presentation of news from Twitter

Some notes if you're upgrading from the old version:

- Your favourites (station and travel direction) should transfer over. Realtime results are now tabbed by direction (not available for all stations) rather than pre-selecting a direction before viewing results. It should automatically go to the tab of your favourite direction.

- The journey planner is scraping Irish Rail's fugly website for timetabled data (yep, still no API for that data - madness!), the parser I built seems to work well but if you find any inconsistencies in information between the website and app do let me know.

- For paid users, the ability to save journey information offline has been removed as I'm not sure how much use the feature was getting. I can look at adding it back in if there's a big enough demand. Same also goes for station shortcuts added on the homescreen. Any station widgets you had on the homescreen may break during this upgrade but if you remove them and add them again they should work fine again.

This is a beta so please let me know of any issues you come across by replying in this thread. Thanks!

Some screenshots:

ongarite

Got notification of the update on my phone this evening.
Superb job on the redesign, it looks and feels fantastic.

5starpool

Not a massive fan of the new layout I have to say. Most I'll get used to, but the graphical element showing where the train is rather than just saying the station name it has arrived at or left last is my least favourite element as it is harder to see where the train is at a glance. Also, does it just always show a train being at a station until it arrives at the next station, so you can't see if it is in a station or has left it?

Also, the app hasn't been giving me any information all day, hopefully this is just a temporary problem.

Overall I have used your app for quite a while and find it much better than anything else available, so thanks for your work in creating and maintaining. I almost always dislike new designs of things I have got used to using, so my feedback is probably a victim of my resistance to change, but as I said above, the new graphical view showing where a train is, is a change for the worst in terms of feature for how I use the app anyhow.

5starpool

Not a massive fan of the new layout I have to say. Most I'll get used to, but the graphical element showing where the train is rather than just saying the station name it has arrived at or left last is my least favourite element as it is harder to see where the train is at a glance. Also, does it just always show a train being at a station until it arrives at the next station, so you can't see if it is in a station or has left it?

Also, the app hasn't been giving me any information all day, hopefully this is just a temporary problem.

Overall I have used your app for quite a while and find it much better than anything else available, so thanks for your work in creating and maintaining. I almost always dislike new designs of things I have got used to using, so my feedback is probably a victim of my resistance to change, but as I said above, the new graphical view showing where a train is, is a change for the worst in terms of feature for how I use the app anyhow.

smackyB

5starpool wrote: »

Not a massive fan of the new layout I have to say. Most I'll get used to, but the graphical element showing where the train is rather than just saying the station name it has arrived at or left last is my least favourite element as it is harder to see where the train is at a glance. Also, does it just always show a train being at a station until it arrives at the next station, so you can't see if it is in a station or has left it?

Also, the app hasn't been giving me any information all day, hopefully this is just a temporary problem.

Overall I have used your app for quite a while and find it much better than anything else available, so thanks for your work in creating and maintaining. I almost always dislike new designs of things I have got used to using, so my feedback is probably a victim of my resistance to change, but as I said above, the new graphical view showing where a train is, is a change for the worst in terms of feature for how I use the app anyhow.

Hi there, I've pushed another update over the weekend which shows the train's last location (if available) in the title bar of the train detail screen. It also auto-scrolls to the next station that the train is calling at. Hopefully that addresses your main concern about the app design changes, thanks for the feedback

Skippy along

Hi
Been using your app for quiet a while now and find it easy to use so well done I purchased your ad free one mainly because I wanted to support your work.
I have a request though would it be possible to make the text of the arrival/departure times at each individual station on a specific route larger
Cheers

smackyB

Skippy along wrote: »

Hi
Been using your app for quiet a while now and find it easy to use so well done I purchased your ad free one mainly because I wanted to support your work.
I have a request though would it be possible to make the text of the arrival/departure times at each individual station on a specific route larger
Cheers

Yep sure thing, will add it to the list for the next update

loyatemu

very nice - would it be possible to make it location-aware so it shows you the nearest stations at the top of the list?

smackyB

loyatemu wrote: »

very nice - would it be possible to make it location-aware so it shows you the nearest stations at the top of the list?

Thanks! Yeah possibly, I'll have a think about how that could be worked into the UI.