wrote in message
oups.com...

...have begun appearing in certain tube stations
in place of the London Connections map.

Thanks for drawing all of our attention to this. I've now finally seen it.

I appluad the sentiment (and was pleasantly surprised
by how much of the south London network qualifies),

The definition of frequent looks deliberately specced down to make most of
south London qualify. Turn Up And Go should be 10 minute maximum headway
IMO.

but isn't there anyway they could be made both clearer
and less ugly? Perhaps by using a different colour
for each London terminal (and Thameslink), and use
broken lines instead of less bold ones for infrequent services.

I think the biggest problem with the map is that it is too hard to tell the
difference between frequent stations and infrequent stations on frequent
lines, such as Hackbridge. I am not convinced that the station names should
be coloured at all, especially when you consider that some interchanges have
a multiple blob which is coloured half frequent and half infrequent
(incidentally the difference between the frequent and infrequent blobs at an
interchange is not clear enough IMO). I can not think of a perfect solution
right now.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

John Rowland
I am not convinced that the station names should
be coloured at all, especially when you consider that some
interchanges have
a multiple blob which is coloured half frequent and half infrequent
(incidentally the difference between the frequent and infrequent blobs
at an
interchange is not clear enough IMO). I can not think of a perfect
solution
right now.

Sorry, I wasn't clear there. I didn't intend that station names should
be coloured, merely the lines they serve - so you could see at a glance
that Bexleyheath was served from Victoria and Charing Cross, for
example.

I think the best model I've seen for a suburban rail map - although it
does rather abandon the Beck model - is the map of rail services in the
Ile de France. Helpfully, I can't find it online; but it uses a
different colour for each RER line, and then a hollow line of the same
colour for the suburban services which feed it. I'd propose a slightly
different model, in which each London terminal was given a colour, and
the frequent and in-frequent routes serving it differentiated in some
way - either by filled/hollow lines (with perhaps a different thickness
used to differentiate NR from LUL lines); or hollow/broken lines. You'd
probably need a slight rethink to involve the light rail lines though.

You know, it's five years since I made that map on your site, and I
find I'm still obsessing over this stuff. I wonder if I have a syndrome
of some sort.

Jonn

On 24 Jan 2005 wrote:

I'd propose a slightly different model, in which each London terminal
was given a colour, and the frequent and in-frequent routes serving it
differentiated in some way - either by filled/hollow lines (with perhaps
a different thickness used to differentiate NR from LUL lines); or
hollow/broken lines.

That's what we're heading towards - LU are now differentiating
tube/frequent rail/infrequent rail by solid/heavy hollow/light hollow
lines, and the ON map shows lines coloured by terminus (as does the NR
version of London Connections, more or less); it's only a matter of time
before we have a Grand Unified Map for everything.

I'm not sure about the one colour per terminal, though. LU's maps have the
idea of one colour per line, which i think should be maintained, and i'm
not sure that you can consider all routes which go to the same terminal to
be a single line. The Windsor and Guildford lines, for example, both go to
Waterloo, but really aren't one line. Perhaps different lines serving the
same termini could be distinguished by different hues or shades of the
same base colour? If Waterloo was red, Windsor could be burgundy,
Guildford scarlet, etc. I'm not sure what you'd do about Thameslink
services which go via Blackfriars and London Bridge; either have the line
change colour as it crosses the river, or leave it off the map!

You'd probably need a slight rethink to involve the light rail lines
though.

Yet another kind of line - i'd suggest narrow solid.

You know, it's five years since I made that map on your site, and I find
I'm still obsessing over this stuff. I wonder if I have a syndrome of
some sort.

Lucky you've got a support group, then!

tom

PS Does anyone know who invented popup windows? I'd like to know so that
if i ever meet him, i can BRUTALLY KILL HIM.

--
The MAtrix had evarything in it: guns, a juimping off teh walls, flying guns, a bullet tiem, evil computar machenes, numbers that flew, flying gun bullets in slowar motian, juimping into a gun, dead police men, computar hackeing, Kevin Mitnick, oven trailers, a old womans kitchen, stairs, mature women in clotheing, head spark plugs, mechaanical squids, Japaneseses assasins, tiem traval, volcanos, a monstar, slow time at fastar speed, magic, wizzards, some dirty place, Kung Few, fighting, a lot of mess explodsians EVARYWHERE, and just about anything else yuo can names!

Tom Anderson:
I'm not sure about the one colour per terminal, though. LU's maps have
the
idea of one colour per line, which i think should be maintained, and
i'm
not sure that you can consider all routes which go to the same
terminal to
be a single line. The Windsor and Guildford lines, for example, both
go to
Waterloo, but really aren't one line. Perhaps different lines serving
the
same termini could be distinguished by different hues or shades of the
same base colour? If Waterloo was red, Windsor could be burgundy,
Guildford scarlet, etc. I'm not sure what you'd do about Thameslink
services which go via Blackfriars and London Bridge; either have the
line
change colour as it crosses the river, or leave it off the map!

I don't think every different route needs different colours (and there
are limits on the number of them you can have, particularly given the
tube will be included as well). But I think there are arguments for
splitting the Waterloo, Victoria, Charing Cross/Cannon Street (which I
think would have to be considered as one terminal - via London Bridge -
to simplify things), London Bridge and Liverpool Street lines. The
others would work with one colour I think.

Jonn

Help me

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:33:22 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

PS Does anyone know who invented popup windows? I'd like to know so that
if i ever meet him, i can BRUTALLY KILL HIM.

Try Firefox. It won't mean you can inflict bodily harm on the
inventor of such things, but it will mean you won't see them any more
unless you want to on a specific site.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Neil Williams wrote:

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:33:22 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

PS Does anyone know who invented popup windows? I'd like to know so
that if i ever meet him, i can BRUTALLY KILL HIM.

Try Firefox. It won't mean you can inflict bodily harm on the inventor
of such things, but it will mean you won't see them any more unless you
want to on a specific site.

True. In fact, i use Firefox on my own machine, but Mozilla at work (it's
a shared machine, so i feel slightly uncomfortable installing
just-out-of-beta software; i'm holding on for 1.1).

What was actually winding me up, though, was not on-load popups, which
Firefox suppresses very effectively, but target-new links - where you
click on a link and it gives you the target in a new window. This is
completely and utterly wrong, worthless, irritating, unusable, evil, bad,
selfish and generally not on behaviour. If i wanted the link in a new
window, i'd open it in a new window. Pray tell me, TfL maps page, what
exactly you think i'm going to do with you after opening the map i'm
after? You must think i have more in mind for you, else you'd let yourself
be replaced by the thing i asked for, LIKE WEBPAGES ARE SUPPOSED TO. Gah.
Anyway, Firefox does have single-window mode and tricks to suppress this
sort of thing, through the miracle of extensions, so i think it'll be
arriving on my desktop sooner rather than later.

The crazy thing is that there must be umpteen usability studies out there
showing that target-new links are bad, but people persist in using them. I
don't think they're doing it out of malice or other evil intent, as with
popup ads, i think they're doing it because they want to make my browsing
experience better and they genuinely think it will help. Have they never
*used* the web? Unbelievable!

Or is this just me?

Anyway, /rant.

tom

--
Michael Jackson had that idea back in the 80s. There was even a ride at Disneyland.

On 24 Jan 2005 wrote:

Tom Anderson:

I'm not sure about the one colour per terminal, though. LU's maps have
the idea of one colour per line, which i think should be maintained,
and i'm not sure that you can consider all routes which go to the same
terminal to be a single line. The Windsor and Guildford lines, for
example, both go to Waterloo, but really aren't one line. Perhaps
different lines serving the same termini could be distinguished by
different hues or shades of the same base colour? If Waterloo was red,
Windsor could be burgundy, Guildford scarlet, etc. I'm not sure what
you'd do about Thameslink services which go via Blackfriars and London
Bridge; either have the line change colour as it crosses the river, or
leave it off the map!

I don't think every different route needs different colours

Well, it doesn't *need* it, strictly, but i think it'd be more useful. I'm
not saying every combination of source and destination should have a
unique colour, just that colours should be used to break the routes up
into more than the three or four groups colouring by terminal would give.
Would you really colour the West Anglia and Great Eastern lines the same,
just because they both run into Liverpool Street? Does that mean we should
also colour the Central and Hammersmith & City lines the same?

(and there are limits on the number of them you can have, particularly
given the tube will be included as well).

Hmm. I think there are few enough colours left after the tube lines that
we're going to have duplication anyway.

But I think there are arguments for splitting the Waterloo, Victoria,
Charing Cross/Cannon Street (which I think would have to be considered
as one terminal - via London Bridge - to simplify things), London Bridge
and Liverpool Street lines. The others would work with one colour I
think.

That is, one colour per terminal, counting some groups of terminals as a
single terminal (we'd probably treat King's Cross and Moorgate as one as
well).

Would you really count Charing Cross/Cannon Street services as distinct
from London Bridge? I'd throw them all in together, myself.

tom

--
Michael Jackson had that idea back in the 80s. There was even a ride at Disneyland.

Tom Anderson:
On 24 Jan 2005 wrote:

Tom Anderson:

I'm not sure about the one colour per terminal, though. LU's maps
have
the idea of one colour per line, which i think should be
maintained,
and i'm not sure that you can consider all routes which go to the
same
terminal to be a single line. The Windsor and Guildford lines, for
example, both go to Waterloo, but really aren't one line. Perhaps
different lines serving the same termini could be distinguished by
different hues or shades of the same base colour? If Waterloo was
red,
Windsor could be burgundy, Guildford scarlet, etc. I'm not sure
what
you'd do about Thameslink services which go via Blackfriars and
London
Bridge; either have the line change colour as it crosses the
river, or
leave it off the map!


I don't think every different route needs different colours



Well, it doesn't *need* it, strictly, but i think it'd be more useful.
I'm
not saying every combination of source and destination should have a
unique colour, just that colours should be used to break the routes up
into more than the three or four groups colouring by terminal would
give.

It'd be more than three or four, surely. I count:

-Fenchurch Street
-Liverpool Street (split into via Hackney, via Stratford)
-Kings Cross/Moorgate
-Thameslink
-Euston
-Marylebone
-Paddington
-Heathrow Express
-Waterloo (split into via Putney, via Wimbledon)
-Victoria (split into via Balham, via Brixton perhaps)
-Blackfriars
-Charing Cross/Cannon Street-London Bridge (South Eastern lines -
perhaps split into North Kent and Mid-Kent lines)
-London Bridge (Southern Lines)
-Orbital routes

That's a lot of colours.


Would you really colour the West Anglia and Great Eastern lines the
same,
just because they both run into Liverpool Street? Does that mean we
should
also colour the Central and Hammersmith & City lines the same?


Not at all - see above.


(and there are limits on the number of them you can have,
particularly
given the tube will be included as well).


Hmm. I think there are few enough colours left after the tube lines
that
we're going to have duplication anyway.


You may be right. Thicker or thinner lines, then...?


Jonn

In article ,
(Tom Anderson) wrote:

What was actually winding me up, though, was not on-load popups, which
Firefox suppresses very effectively, but target-new links - where you
click on a link and it gives you the target in a new window. This is
completely and utterly wrong, worthless, irritating, unusable, evil,
bad, selfish and generally not on behaviour.

It always seems a good idea to me that links off a site should open a new
window.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Tom Anderson wrote to uk.transport.london on Tue, 25 Jan 2005:

What was actually winding me up, though, was not on-load popups, which
Firefox suppresses very effectively, but target-new links - where you
click on a link and it gives you the target in a new window. This is
completely and utterly wrong, worthless, irritating, unusable, evil, bad,
selfish and generally not on behaviour.

Oh, I disagree - there are lots of times I want a link to open in a new
window - or a new tab, in Firefox - and it doesn't, and then I swear
because I've lost the page I was originally looking at! I'd far rather
that was the default.....

Or is this just me?

As far as I'm concerned, I'm afraid it is! But each to his or her
own....
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 23 January 2005 with new photos