The Java tool takes up more memory, but it actually shows you the bus location. I've watched the buses going by on the street below and it's actually pretty cool to see bus 5463 drive by and match it up on screen. This widget does not distinguish itself but contains what I would call the relavent information.
I'd give it a 5 if it could do one simple thing that no bus tracking tool has added, and that is the ability to track multiple stops. At work, all the busses I take run down… the same street. At home, I'm split evenly between two different stops. My biggest decision to make is WHICH stop to go to, not in as much WHEN. Please add the ability to select multiple stops so I can figure out the most appropriate stop.Less
I never know my end of work day schedule so being able to get a quick glimpse of the next couple of buses coming is a great help. A must for Metro riders.
Widget offers just about everything I need for monitoring the bus I am trying to catch. I have to walk about 13 mins to get to my bus stop, it really doesn't help when bus is early. And more than often they are.
Also I really like the preferences where I can select the color of the background and font for bus on time, before time and early.
After installing, be sure to choose a location in Widget preferences. You can choose to filter the buses shown at that location, as well as filter on the destination of the buses.
You can also fully customize the delayed/early/ontime colors, both the color of the text, and the color of the row. The defaults are:
- On time: White text
- Delayed: Yellow text
- Early: Yellow text on red background
This widget gets its data from a Univ. of Wash. web-service called ITS: http://www.its.washington….edu/its_ws.html
- No indication of express vs regular buses. This means both an 18 and an 18 express will both show simply as "18" in this widget. Compare to the metro web page which shows 18 and 18E
- No data at all for scheduled stops with no prediction. For example, the metro web page will say "no data" for a scheduled stop with no prediction. With this widget the scheduled stop with no prediction will not appear at all.
I am looking into a way to solve the above issues, possibly screen-scraping the metro web page.
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Background: I had been using the Seattle MyBus Watcher widget for years with no problems. But then I upgraded to Y! Widget v4.5 and the MyBus watcher stopped working. Since the original author did not seem to be around, I decided to write a new one.
I also decided to "fix" a few things. For example, I put the bus number and prediction right next to each to make it easier to check with a glance.
I also didn't like the old colors, where delayed was red and early was yellow. For me, buses running early are more "dangerous", and I wanted those to be red. But maybe some people feel differently. So with this new widget, you can choose whatever colors you want. Of course, the defaults are the colors I like best. :-)Less