Users of early versions of browsers (for example, version 5 of Internet Explorer or version 7.0 of Netscape, or lower, or version 1.0 of Firefox) may experience some minor display problems, such as misalignment of text in certain areas of the website. Users with higher versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape and Firefox will see the website as designed.

Please note that the site does not support the use of Internet Explorer on Macs. We recommend Mac users use Macintosh Safari.

Accessing Transport Direct in more than one window within the same browser session may cause a serious error. In order to view Transport Direct in more than one window please open a new browser session rather than opening a new window (or tab) within the same browser.

13.2) Can I print information from the website?

Yes, you can print any page on the website.

Some pages will have a ‘Printer friendly’ button in the top right corner of the page:

Click ‘Printer friendly’ and a new browser window will open with the ‘printer friendly’ version of the page you would like to print
Click the printer icon on your browser or go to ‘File’ and ‘Print’ on your browser to print the page. Close the window by clicking the ‘x’ in the top right corner of the window

The printer friendly version of a page showing a map will print more clearly than the normal web page.

On printing the journey details the "itinerary line" may fail to appear on the printout. This issue occurs because the default settings on Internet Explorer and Firefox disable the printing of background images and coloured backgrounds. To solve this issue the default settings can be changed manually in both browsers.

13.3) How can I save my travel preferences and my favourite journeys?

When you are logged in and using the "Door-to-door" planner, you can save travel preferences and favourite journey requests.

To save travel preferences:

Tick the ‘Save these details’ box across from ‘Travel preferences’. This saves the details you enter in this section so that you don’t have to re-enter your preferences each time you plan a journey.

To save your favourite Door-to-door journey:

If you would like to save a Door-to-door journey request so that you can look up the results again without entering all the details each time, first plan the journey, then click the ‘Save as a favourite journey’ tab on the results page
Then save the journey - either under the name the website gives it (i.e. Journey 1) or under a name you have chosen - and click ‘OK’
Once you have clicked ‘OK’ the journey request will be saved

The next time you are on the ‘Door-to-door’ journey planner you can select saved journey requests in the ‘Favourite journeys’ drop-down list at the top of the page and then click ‘OK’ to get up-to-date results.

13.4) Can I bookmark certain journeys (save as favourites)?

Yes, using Internet Explorer, you can bookmark journey requests (not including "Advanced options") so that they are saved in your "Favourites" list even if you are not registered with Transport Direct. You can do this by clicking the "Bookmark this journey for the future" link. This is useful if you make certain journeys frequently and don't want to enter all the details for them each time you use Transport Direct.

13.5) Why should I register on Transport Direct?

Registering on Transport Direct enables you to login so that you can:

Save your favourite journeys so that you can access them in future without having to re-enter any information
Save travel preferences when entering information for a journey so that you won’t have to enter them again – but you can change them if you wish
Email travel information to other people

You can remove your registration details at any time on the Contact Us page. To do so, select "Other" from the "I have feedback..." drop-down list, type "unregister" followed by your registered email address in the "Details" box and click "Submit". Your registration details will then be removed from our system. We would appreciate it if you could let us know why you wish to remove your registration - by typing this into the "Details" section too.

13.6) How can I email information to other people?

When you are logged in you can email selected journey information to other people. (To log in you need to be a registered user.)

To send other people the journey information:

Click the ‘Send to a friend’ tab at the bottom of a results page
Type in the email address of the person you wish to send the information to
Click ‘Send’.

An email containing the selected journey information as well as a map if applicable will be sent to that email address.

13.7) What is the purpose of the Transport Direct Toolbar?

The Transport Direct Toolbar puts the resources of Transport Direct on your browser, giving you easier access to the travel information you need.

The toolbar gives you a fast track into planning journeys or accessing the main features of Transport Direct. To plan a journey just enter the postcodes to travel to and from into the Toolbar and click "Go". The journey request will be processed by Transport Direct and the results will be shown in a new window.

13.8) How can I add a Transport Direct link to my website?

Click the "Add Transport Direct to your website" link on the "Tips and Tools" page if you would like to add a journey planning feature to your website. This feature will allow your customers and visitors to plan a journey to your premises simply by entering the postcode they are travelling from.

13.9) Do I need to have JavaScript enabled to use Transport Direct?

All the core functionality of Transport Direct is available if you do not have JavaScript enabled. However, we recommend enabling JavaScript if possible, as this will give you some additional features and a better user experience.

Without JavaScript enabled you may find some of the links to other pages within the Transport Direct web site do not work. You can avoid this problem if you click ‘View non-JavaScript page’ in the bar beneath the tabs. The system will then display ‘Go’ buttons next to these links to enable them to be activated.

13.10) Is Transport Direct an accessible website?

Transport Direct is committed to providing usable and accessible information. Several areas of the site have been given particular attention so as to make them increasingly accessible:

Design

The site has been designed for 1024 x 768 screen resolutions to avoid horizontal scrolling on those sized screens
This site uses cascading style sheets for layout
This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers
If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable
Many of the diagrams that exist on the portal can also be viewed in a table format.

Links

Unless the wording in the link already fully describes the target (the page it's linking to), title attributes that describe the link in greater detail have been added.

Tab indexing
If you do not have a mouse or prefer to use your keyboard when using the Internet, you can jump from link to link using the tab key on your keyboard. When using a screenreader, the main and sub-navigation can be skipped in order to jump to the content of the pages.

Images
In order to give you more information about an image on the site, all images include descriptive ALT attributes. This is useful for users with screenreaders as it give images meaningful descriptions. Purely decorative graphics include null (empty) ALT attributes.

Adobe Acrobat
Within the Transport Direct website you will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view some of the Network maps which are in the form of PDF files. If you don't already have it installed, there is an icon on the "Network maps" page linking to Acrobat Reader download page on the Adobe website.

The Transport Direct website currently conforms to Level A of the Web Accessibility Guidelines (WAI) produced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

13.11) Why is my company browser blocking some Transport Direct functionality?

Many companies now employ third party Web Security Gateway applications to protect their employees from potentially malicious web sites. Some of the methods that these applications use to determine whether or not a site poses a threat can be quite unsophisticated. For example, long web addresses or large file sizes may be considered as indications of a possible threat. As Transport Direct is a complex site, it often relies on passing large amounts of data across to users in order to display the complex journey plans requested. We have found that, in some cases, this can trigger alerts in the third party software, and some users have found themselves unable to access parts of the site.

In these circumstances, the user will typically receive an error message from their company’s information technology support centre telling them that the page has been blocked. If you experience such a problem we ask that you contact your own company IT department to ask them to allow access to the www.transportdirect.info domain. They will then be able to place this site on an allowed list which should remove the issue for all your company’s employees. We also ask that you submit some feedback to Transport Direct, so that we may contact the third party supplier to ask that they also add us to their generic allowed domain list.

13.12) What is social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

Transport Direct supports links to a number of social bookmarking sites to enable users to save and share journeys users have planned so that these journeys can be easily shared and recreated.

Some social bookmarking sites have a URL limit of 255 characters; if this limit is breached they will be unable to save the URL.