[HN Gopher] Washington State Ferries - Small Schedule
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       Washington State Ferries - Small Schedule
        
       Author : twobitshifter
       Score  : 106 points
       Date   : 2021-08-22 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wsdot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wsdot.com)
        
       | elchief wrote:
       | seeing __doPostBack() in the source brings back some memories
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | I recently spent 6 months in west seattle and got a chance to
       | take the ferries. Great fun. Protip: book your tickets in
       | advance.
       | 
       | One time on the way back, we got prioritized behind all the
       | people with tickets and boat after boat... 4-5 hours later.
       | Luckily I have a campervan, so it wasn't a huge deal to wait in
       | line, but I definitely learned a big lesson!
        
         | mypalmike wrote:
         | Just to add: reservations are only available on a couple routes
         | (Coupeville and the San Juan Islands), and only during summer
         | tourist season. Most routes are fcfs.
        
       | hamandcheese wrote:
       | It's great that it's lightweight, but the information on my
       | already-small iPhone 12 mini takes up a small fraction of my
       | screen and is illegible without zooming in. Fixing this would
       | take just a few more lines of CSS.
       | 
       | Edit: or maybe just a single line of HTML to set the viewport
       | meta tag.
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | I wonder if any notable sites forgot to turn off their WAP/WML
       | interfaces.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | I don't think they "forgot" but Nextbus is contractually
         | required to maintain a WAP site by the SF MTA (and possibly
         | other customers).
         | 
         | https://retro.umoiq.com/s/w2
        
           | tyingq wrote:
           | Interesting. It's hard to even find a functioning wap
           | browser...lots of dead links.
        
       | lowboy wrote:
       | This is not a good experience on a mobile device. It could likely
       | be fixed with a few dozen bytes of inline css.
       | 
       | https://i.imgur.com/T5ntV2A.png
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | Or.
         | 
         | <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
         | scale=1">
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | wtallis wrote:
         | This looks to me like the browser failing to include a
         | reasonable default stylesheet.
        
           | Gaelan wrote:
           | Mobile browsers have, since at least the first iPhone,
           | defaulted to showing websites zoomed way out, on the theory
           | that the site might not have been designed for a screen that
           | narrow. Sites that are designed to support a phone screen are
           | supposed to say so, using the meta tag given elsewhere in the
           | thread.
        
       | arlattimore wrote:
       | You could deliver that in a more traditional UX, but that
       | typically means you need to deal with calendar controls etc. For
       | mobile users, maybe they should add those same quick links to the
       | standard site and see how users react - I bet they'd be well
       | received.
        
       | mcswell wrote:
       | Why, when there is only one possible answer to the next question,
       | does it still insist on asking that question? Pick your departing
       | port as Bainbridge Island and see what I mean.
        
         | maverwa wrote:
         | Consistency, makes it easier to understand. When it would
         | automatically pick the only possible answer, you might think
         | that you accidentally clicked on the next link already or that
         | something else happened incorrectly. You would have to add a
         | message stating that the system auto-selected the only possible
         | destination. It's also (slightly) easier to implement. Both not
         | hugely problematic, but in my opinion its the correct decision
         | for this case.
        
       | na85 wrote:
       | BC Ferries used to do this also, but have in the last few years
       | moved to a more modern-looking, responsive layout.
       | 
       | TBH I miss the old-school unstyled text.
        
       | sharken wrote:
       | So much advertising opportunity lost :)
       | 
       | But a very no-nonsense site that doesn't get in your way, I'm a
       | fan.
        
       | aaronbrethorst wrote:
       | You can also find Washington State Ferries data in OneBusAway,
       | which is free, open source, and has just been rewritten in Swift:
       | https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-ios
       | 
       | (and is also looking for volunteer developers and localizers.)
        
       | jffry wrote:
       | I wish more sites offered simple, fast, "lite" versions.
       | 
       | For example, https://lite.cnn.com
        
         | kleinsch wrote:
         | Zero-JS, fully functional, but sure to be downvoted...
         | 
         | https://mbasic.facebook.com/
        
           | underyx wrote:
           | Thanks for linking this, I've been using m.facebook.com for
           | years now and will be replacing it with mbasic!
           | 
           | I did downvote though as you requested.
        
         | perihelions wrote:
         | Duckduckgo has two different ones,
         | 
         | https://html.duckduckgo.com/
         | 
         | https://lite.duckduckgo.com/
        
           | themodelplumber wrote:
           | Also worth mentioning for searching the classic web:
           | https://wiby.me/
        
           | dredmorbius wrote:
           | Not _quite_ light, but: https://duckduckgo.com/tty/
        
             | doitLP wrote:
             | https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | Which is what I'd already replied to.
        
         | drstewart wrote:
         | Also https://text.npr.org/
        
         | 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
         | Interesting. 3 stories about Biden. 4 stories about Trump.
        
           | ChrisClark wrote:
           | It's almost as if the news reports current events. 7 stories
           | about the current and past president out of ~60? Must be some
           | conspiracy! :D
        
             | rdiddly wrote:
             | The past president is usually just that, not news. But
             | Trump was good for ratings and they don't want to let it
             | go.
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | To be fair the current president is usually not news
               | because they're not doing anything out of the ordinary
               | (ordinarily)
               | 
               | Trump makes himself newsworthy by being a bottomless pit
               | of disorder. No disagreement that the news is in it for
               | the ratings/eyeballs etc, but how is it the news's fault
               | that trump is good for ratings?
        
               | WesleyHale wrote:
               | I would think the Afghanistan situation would give them
               | enough fuel for at least a week or two.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | Three of the four Trump-related headlines in question
               | _are_ about Afghanistan.
        
               | rdiddly wrote:
               | Who said anything about fault? But now that you mention
               | it, news media did provide crucial care and feeding for
               | his campaign in the first place, perhaps thinking it was
               | all a joke, but in any case correctly guessing it would
               | be good for ratings.
        
               | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
               | > To be fair the current president is usually not news
               | because they're not doing anything out of the ordinary
               | (ordinarily)
               | 
               | I do find it interesting that most news sites seem to
               | have agreed that his stumbling, bumbling way of often
               | losing his train of thought is rarely worth a mention.
        
             | shadilay wrote:
             | Personally I would expect the news to be biased towards the
             | current year 'news' vs last years 'olds'.
        
           | gccs wrote:
           | I thought you were joking but there are literally 4 stories
           | about trump.
        
       | networked wrote:
       | http://slashdot.org/palm was available at least from 2000 [1] to
       | 2016 [2]. (Perhaps a year or two longer, but the Internet
       | Archive's crawler got banned in February 2016. The current error
       | page was first archived in October 2018.)
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20001012050323/http://slashdot.o...
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20160128183858/http://slashdot.o...
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-22 23:01 UTC)