{"id":327,"date":"2016-06-09T16:24:53","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T16:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=327"},"modified":"2016-06-06T16:29:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T16:29:28","slug":"transport-for-londons-bus-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"Transport for London’s bus website"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transport for London has just stopped providing its simple bus mobile app which told you when the bus is about to come – and forced everyone to try to work with a much more complex one.<\/p>\n

In the words of one commenter on an online website run by Transport for London, the new website “needs 6 stylesheets for the main page (2200 lines of HTML code), 21 external javascripts (some fairly hefty), 18 images and 3 fonts (?!). I stopped counting there because there are also numerous frames with their own javascript, images etc\u2026”<\/p>\n

“The old page that loaded in no time has 100 lines of HTML code, 3 external javascripts and two lightweight images built for mobiles” – he wrote. See the discussion here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is going on? I can understand why in some sectors of the software industry there is a bias for complexity – it is perhaps much easier to sell complex software than simple software. There are some examples of people who managed to sell simple software and electronic products – the iPod comes to mind – but not so many.<\/p>\n

Transport for London is not selling software itself, perhaps it is employing an expensive external software company which wants to build something fancy to justify a large bill?<\/p>\n

Or perhaps this is just that software programmers feel that they are somehow ‘doing more’ if they build something fancy and complex – rather than something which does the job as perfectly as possible?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transport for London has just stopped providing its simple bus mobile app which told you when the bus is about to come – and forced everyone to try to work with a much more complex one. In the words of one commenter on an online website run by Transport for London, the new website “needs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}