National Rail Enquiries to launch live departure board for Windows Vista users

National Rail Enquiries in partnership with Conchango have created a live departure board gadget that is designed for the Windows Vista Sidebar. It allows users who download it to their desktop to view the status of a train.

The tool uses National Rail Enquiries (www.nationalrail.co.uk) website’s existing real time information to display live departure boards for any station across Britain’s rail network. Users can view times and departure points for trains throughout the United Kingdom. One of the key benefits of the gadget is that if a train is late, it will be highlighted and inform the users as to the expected time of arrival - and if it is cancelled the departure details will turn red.

Jason Webb, head of online services at National Rail Enquiries said:

“At National Rail Enquiries we are always seeking new ways of delivering information that is easy to use and through channels that our users desire.

“Using the latest technology, we have built upon the success of our live departure boards to offer a vista gadget that can sit on the desktop showing your station or journey”

Vista gadgets are mini applications that can run on Vista installed PCs.

The live departure board gadget was originally produced to demonstrate some of the technical capabilities of the Windows Vista Sidebar and published on the Conchango blog. After discussions with National Rail Enquiries, further developments to the user experience were made in readiness for a public release.

The gadget is written in JavaScript, DHTML and VB and utilises the Microsoft AJAX client library to facilitate an ‘as you type’ search to find the station you’re interested in.

National Rail Enquiries are in the process of creating gadgets for Mac and Windows XP.

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