New Format Fleet LIsts

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New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Fleet Lists »

A lot of work has been done behind the scenes in developing new format fleet lists where all fleet lists wil be created from databases by a common set of scripts.

A number of options are availabe for different operators and these are table driven such as the need to have columns for depot and livery which are optional in the lists.

And depot names can be the full name or a letter code as used for Veolia NSW.

Fleet List summaries are also optional and can come in different formats ie with or without livery summaries.

For operators with more than one depot, the default is the full fleet list but from there, there is an option to have buses listed by depot (this feature was only developed this morning).

In conjunction with this a new fleet lists home page has also been developed - one feature that is missing is the list of recently newly added pages.
If this a real requirement it will be placed on jobs to be done and will probaly not be available in the first version.

Another option which is being looked is to have the ex buses listed in a separate list but this is not available yet.

Queensland lists are currently in the process of being converted and this should shortly be completed.

However as a first step I have also created a list in the new format for Veolia NSW which encompasses most of the features of the new system.

Here are some links worth looking at - keeping in mind that they are still being developed and may from time to time be down as work is being done on them.

In this systen operator information where available is shown on a separate page from the fleet list - route information is NOT being included as it is normally available elsewhere.

Note - many of the links will not work as they are set up for the live situation while this is running in the test folder.

Home Page - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... mepage.php

Veolia NSW - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... search=VEL

Queensland - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... ex-qld.php

One aspect we are still looking at is how to group operators together ie whether by region and whether the regions should be in alphabetical order or some order which would need to controlled. Any comments there would be welcome.

As would be any other comments.

Some work still needs to be done on the updating script which allows updating on Qld but not the Veolia one yet.

But omce this has been done it is hoped to have Veolia live very shortly followed by the Queensland ones.
Or Queensland first if the conversion is completed as I have just received advice while I am typing this that there are only two operators to go.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by MAN 16.242 »

One question in regards to route information is not being included.
What about the few company’s that do not have website with route info.
or bus company with country runs that are not on there website, and sometimes hard to find info else where.

And also people wanting to know what bus company runs what v/line services,Courtesy Bus runs,etc
As things such as v/line services,Courtesy Bus runs.maybe be able to be find else where.
but ofthen do not tell you who runs it

Would will be able to keep route info on Fleet lists where the bus company does not have a website or if some of there route info is hard to find else where.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Deleted 16/4/2008 »

Fleet Lists wrote:A lot of work has been done behind the scenes in developing new format fleet lists where all fleet lists wil be created from databases by a common set of scripts.

A number of options are availabe for different operators and these are table driven such as the need to have columns for depot and livery which are optional in the lists.

And depot names can be the full name or a letter code as used for Veolia NSW.

Fleet List summaries are also optional and can come in different formats ie with or without livery summaries.

For operators with more than one depot, the default is the full fleet list but from there, there is an option to have buses listed by depot (this feature was only developed this morning).

In conjunction with this a new fleet lists home page has also been developed - one feature that is missing is the list of recently newly added pages.
If this a real requirement it will be placed on jobs to be done and will probaly not be available in the first version.

Another option which is being looked is to have the ex buses listed in a separate list but this is not available yet.

Queensland lists are currently in the process of being converted and this should shortly be completed.

However as a first step I have also created a list in the new format for Veolia NSW which encompasses most of the features of the new system.

Here are some links worth looking at - keeping in mind that they are still being developed and may from time to time be down as work is being done on them.

In this systen operator information where available is shown on a separate page from the fleet list - route information is NOT being included as it is normally available elsewhere.

Note - many of the links will not work as they are set up for the live situation while this is running in the test folder.

Home Page - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... mepage.php

Veolia NSW - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... search=VEL

Queensland - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... ex-qld.php

One aspect we are still looking at is how to group operators together ie whether by region and whether the regions should be in alphabetical order or some order which would need to controlled. Any comments there would be welcome.

As would be any other comments.

Some work still needs to be done on the updating script which allows updating on Qld but not the Veolia one yet.

But omce this has been done it is hoped to have Veolia live very shortly followed by the Queensland ones.
Or Queensland first if the conversion is completed as I have just received advice while I am typing this that there are only two operators to go.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by member 1423 »

Good work on the update, but can I suggest the same colours that are currently used? I find its nicer to read. The black border lines are also quite annoying.

But its good to see a fresh new format - good work fellahs.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by PAQ12 »

Redhood wrote:One question in regards to route information is not being included.
What about the few company’s that do not have website with route info.
or bus company with country runs that are not on there website, and sometimes hard to find info else where.

And also people wanting to know what bus company runs what v/line services,Courtesy Bus runs,etc
As things such as v/line services,Courtesy Bus runs.maybe be able to be find else where.
but ofthen do not tell you who runs it

Would will be able to keep route info on Fleet lists where the bus company does not have a website or if some of there route info is hard to find else where.
The re-organisation of the fleetlists was started by me whilst FleetLists was on holidays or in retirement, and the aim was to convert everything to database, and the people responsible for each state, able to update the information easier than having to edit html pages.

The idea of removing the route inforamtion was done as you mentioned the word yourself, 'Fleet lists'. Having route information on BA could be something Ken might want to investigate further if he chooses too, but thats not ruling out that such info could not be returned at a later date.

At the moment, the system is still being developed with changes happening to the scripts daily, with more pages converted to databases each day too. Whilst I have been instrumental in setting up the layout and the base scripts, Fleet Lists has been able to render the scripts to operate faster & with additional functions than what my limited knowledge of programming can do. At the present time, i've been doing the conversions of the QLD lists (and yes there may be errors in there, but hopefully ironed out before going live).

We are open to comments and suggestions, and where possible and limited too in what can be programmed, things can be added/removed within reason.

As for the colour scheme BPQ, I chose green & gold due to the obvious, and also am aiming for a totally fresh new look, with uformity between all pages. :roll:

Other additions to this change is also a 'random' image on the fleet lists home page (if you press F5, hopefully the picture should change). There was something else but I cant remember
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by PAQ12 »

As a further note, on the state home pages, you'll notice that they have 'region', and some just have a bland region of 'Queensland XXX' or worse off, question marks??? - if anyone would be able to PM me with more accurate region names, that would be appreciated (sorry, don't know much about my own state i've lived in for 29 years and 343 days)
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Member 2298 »

The main homepage( http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... mepage.php ) is ok but the green background is too harsh for eyes - perhaps the colour need to be adjusted to make it user-friendly.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by PAQ12 »

Y2112 wrote:The main homepage( http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... mepage.php ) is ok but the green background is too harsh for eyes - perhaps the colour need to be adjusted to make it user-friendly.
All pages should have the lighter pale green background.
Do you have any suggestions? (and PINK is out of the question - it doesn't suit it) The idea of the green with the yellow/gold in the page are Australian colours!

Here is another example, look at http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage.php for a darker green bg, with yellow content border
And another example, http://www.btbuss.info/fleetlists/homepage2.php with a peachy colour bg, with a green content border.
(please note the above 2 links are just for this purpose only)
Also another 2 options: http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage3.php & http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage4.php

Any other examples, i'm open to hearing them.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by PAQ12 »

There is also now another version of the fleet lists style (one Fleet Lists has sent). If possible, if an admin could setup a poll on this one so we have a better understanding of what people want would be appreciated.

ver 1 - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... mepage.php
ver 2 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage.php
ver 3 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage2.php
ver 4 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage3.php
ver 5 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage4.php
ver 6 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage5.php (lastest version of the bg colour)
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Member 2298 »

BT Buses wrote:There is also now another version of the fleet lists style (one Fleet Lists has sent). If possible, if an admin could setup a poll on this one so we have a better understanding of what people want would be appreciated.

ver 1 - http://www.busaustralia.com/fleetlists/ ... mepage.php
ver 2 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage.php = green colour appropriate
ver 3 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage2.php = Colour too 1980's style
ver 4 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage3.php = too much yellow would distract eyes, would dazzle when changing to different pages that has white bkground pages
ver 5 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage4.php = yolk dark yellow seems right
ver 6 - http://www.btbuses.info/fleetlists/homepage5.php (lastest version of the bg colour) -= seems reasonable
here is my feedback above to these proptype pages in bold:
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Fleet Lists »

From various comments received here, private messages and emails, we have made a number of changes.

Of course it is not possuble to please everyone as in some cases a person wanted something a bit lighter while someone else wanted it a bit darker, and so on.

In the case of the background colour, I have changed it to a lighter green but there again I have already received a comment that it is now too light.

And as far as the lists themselves are concerned I tried a lot of different options over the last few days, most of which were unsatisfactoy one way or another.

In the final cut (at this stage as we are still open to further comments) both the fleet number and registration are shown over the two rows and both in bold. Other data cells are not bold.
The cell padding has been increased from 1 to 2 so that the borders are just that little bit further awy from the data in the cells.

Some columns are centred. A suggestion to right align the VIN did not look any good.

The lines between the cells have been changed from black to grey - the same as the background for the header cells.

And a new border of green has been introduced between buses.

All data in cells is now aligned to the top of the cell concerned.

Font - Some examples were passed around showing different formats which used Times New Roman font. It had NOT been intended that this was an example of the font - however one comment was received that the person concerned preferred the Times New Roman font.

No action has been taken on this at this stage as personally I prefer the Arial font but this is also open to comment.

We are still looking at not showing the fleet number column if no fleet number/names are used by the operator concerned but this a longer term job as there are higher priority things to be introduced such as speeding up the loading of the index page which appears too slow in the case of Queensland, solving a problem which prevents the capture of New South operators who do not use fleet numbers - registrations for such operators are shown in an incorrect sequence, the use of " around body types which is causing a problem, listing the previously operated buses of larger operators in a separate page and better handling of regions in the index page just to name some.

It is expected that any further comments received will now not be acted upon until we have started to introduce some of the new lists.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by member 1423 »

Looking good there 'BT Buses' and 'Fleetlists'
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Fleet Lists »

Of the matters to be done, the speeding up of the Queensland index page has already been achieved.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

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Today's update.

The fleet list column will now not be displayed if no fleet numbers are encountered in the fleet list for the operator concerned.

Similarly the depot and livery columns will now only be diplayed if information is encountered for the relevant column, in the fleet list concerned. Previously these columns were table driven so it was necessary for someone to remember to change these settings if the fleet numbers were deleted or introduced. This is now all automatic.

And the new border between buses was changed from green to black as were the heading and table borders, although personally I preferred the green.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

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I agree Fleetlists, the green was easier on the eyes
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Fleet Lists »

Today's developments:-
The Queensland private operators lists have been made available in the real folder for updating to commence and some updates have already been done.

The software transfered over included the BCC disposal information in the new format.
Online update facility for the data concerned is not yet available - one of the many things still to be addressed.

Since then the script to display these lists has been changed to show the same line between buses as the normal lists and also show the rego in bold as the other lists do. This list was vey slow displaying and this was traced to a sort statement in the wrong place -this was removed. Also a slight change was made in the format and sequence of the data which resulted in a small change to the script.

So just after 2pm the newer version of the disposal software was uploaded to the real folder.

It is planned to create a link from the Fleet lIsts home page to the new version lists on Tuesday initially as an alternate link to ensure there are no problems before removing the old links.

And today a private script was written for BenO to extract certain disposal information from the database concerned to save him maintaining that information separately.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Fleet Lists »

Today's happenings.

This morning the new format Veolia NSW fleet list was connected to the curent NSW index page for one and all to see.

And a minor change was made to the Brisbane Disposals page to bring the message at the bottom of the page into line with the messag at the bottom of the normal lists.

And then this afternoon in the chnages page the gree line which had been left out of theheading is now there.

And a link has been placed behind the operators name to allow direct link to the fleet list of the operator concerned.

And in the normal lists a new facility is now supported where for larger operators disposals in the fleet list can be dipslayed on a separate page from buses still in service.

And good progress is being made to rewrite the sections of the update script which sequences buses for the new fleet lists.
For New South Wales operators withput fleet lists the following sequnce willbe forced:-
m/o 3 digit registrations.
m/o 4 digit registrations.
MO 3 digit registrations.
MO 4 digit registrations.
TV 3 digit registrations.
TV 4 digit registrations.
m/o 3 digit registrations.
Any other registrations starting with an alpha character.
Any other registrations starting with a numeric
Any other registratios such as - ? etc.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

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And today a link has been included in the old version home page for the new Queensland lists so they are now availabel for all to see.

Links to the old lists have been retained for the time being.

And the links in the headings of all pages have now been changed to link to the new version index pages for New South Wales and Queensland. In the case of new South Wales the index pages only contains Veolia with a link to the old index page for any other lists.

A smal change was made to the index page script last night so that it now presents the html code in a format which makjs it easier for me to convert the links to a format suitable for the Google sitemap. As a result it only took me less than an hour to add the 157 new links to the Google sitemap and my own google monitoring script.

And then in the last hour or so, a further enhancement was added so that from the fleet summary pages links are present under the chassis types to provide a full list of the buses for the chassis/body types to which the link relates.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Daniel »

Just something I've noticed with the new fleet list database changes.

I use Firefox instead of IE, and the new fleetlists appear without column and row borders between buses. Also in Firefox the Bus number, rego, body date and seating appear to become aligned to the left but when looked at in IE they are centred.

Not sure if it is just my computer settings or if anyone else is experiencing this issue, just thought I'd raise the point.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by PAQ12 »

Have to be honest, I haven't check it in firefox this time, but I doubt will be your computer, it is just the way that firefox doesn't do things.
It's a pain in the bum that all the browsers don't render everything the same way, but looks like something that will have to be further investigated.
Thanks for letting us know.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Herbert »

Good work guys.
Fleet Lists wrote:Font - ... No action has been taken on this at this stage as personally I prefer the Arial font but this is also open to comment.

Arial is a good choice because it is easier to distinguish between a zero & an "O", and a one and a lowercase "L".

I use Firefox too, but it seems to render the pages better than IE 7. Neither browser has lines separating rows, but the centred fleet no in IE makes it difficult to see to which line of data it refers, whereas Firefox top aligns it.

Is it possible to use alternate shading for each vehicle (ie as per the WA lists)?
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by PAQ12 »

Herbert wrote:Is it possible to use alternate shading for each vehicle (ie as per the WA lists)?
Are you referring to 'alternate' row colours? If so, that could be an option, but only for screen, but for printed format, would still be better being boxed.
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

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Herbert wrote:Good work guys.
Fleet Lists wrote:Font - ... No action has been taken on this at this stage as personally I prefer the Arial font but this is also open to comment.

Arial is a good choice because it is easier to distinguish between a zero & an "O", and a one and a lowercase "L".

I use Firefox too, but it seems to render the pages better than IE 7. Neither browser has lines separating rows, but the centred fleet no in IE makes it difficult to see to which line of data it refers, whereas Firefox top aligns it.

Is it possible to use alternate shading for each vehicle (ie as per the WA lists)?
While creating the new version I was very careful (using IE only) to ensure that vertical lines were present between cells so if some versions of IE do not do I think we may have a problem. Such lines are of a lighter colour than the lines separating buses.

Looks like more invesitgation is required and I will need more input from FireFox users once we change things to ensure it all works.

Somehow I think we may need to be slightly less dependent on
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Re: New Format Fleet LIsts

Post by Fleet Lists »

I use Firefox too, but it seems to render the pages better than IE 7. Neither browser has lines separating rows, but the centred fleet no in IE makes it difficult to see to which line of data it refers, whereas Firefox top aligns it.
In my IE 7 the data is also top aligned and the lines are shown so I dont know what the problem is there.

Anyway here are the changes for the day:-
1. Where the listing requests buses for a particular depot, the depot column is suppressed in the list as it is shown in the heading.
2. In the fleet summary the depot summary is suppressed if there is only one depot.
3. Also in the lfeet summary in the Veolia list the livery code is no longer shown immediately behing the fleet number in the chassis summary which was previously the only place it was shown but it is now in the full list - and a more detailed livery summary along the lines as currently used in CDC is being coded and hopefully will be implemented within the next week.
4. Two extra lines have been added to the style sheet which will hopefully allow the grey vertical lines between cells within a bus definition to be shown. Some feedback from Firefox users as to whether this has been fixed would be appreciated.
5. The home page (still the old version) now shows the NEW Queensland link just as the ordinary Queensland link, the Brisbane Transport one has been removed as it is now back in the normal state index page and old Queensland index is shown as OLD.
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