Mapview starting location

[Jim]

I posed a question on GitHub: https://github.com/TravelMapping/Web/issues/746

Please feel free to share thoughts there or in this forum thread.

[si404]

Sienna College is all well and good, but I don't use it and either scroll thousands of miles, or type something specific in the search bar. Something to dump me the right side of the pond would be nice, but I'm not overly fussed about it.

(same goes for wptedit)

[rickmastfan67]

Meh, I have no issues with this.  I mostly just paste in where I want to go and then pan. lol.

[yakra]

Me, I just edit the URL to point to specific regions or systems, or occasionally look up a particular place name.

[Bickendan]

I don't use it and scroll to where I need, but I'm hard pressed to think of what would be a better default point.

[Duke87]

I honestly forgot that loading mapview without a rg or sys parameter was a thing. Indeed my usual way of getting to it is typing "rg=" in the address bar, grabbing one of the options Firefox suggests as a match, and then editing what comes after the = sign to what I want.

I could see it defaulting to the user's current location if available being potentially useful, though this is not a functionality I see myself using since, well, see above.

[pderocco]

Yes, I know this is old, but nothing has changed yet.

Another possibility would be to remember the last viewed location and zoom level in a cookie.

But the main thing for me is the ease or difficulty of getting around. In most mapping programs, if I'm looking, say, at New York and I want to look at California, I use the mouse wheel to scroll way out, then scroll back in. That doesn't work on travelmapping unless you turn off "Always Update Visible Routes", because when you zoom way out, there is so much data to download that it hangs. I think that there should be a zoom level above which it refuses to download anything, so that all you can do is move around. Indeed, if the only purpose of that checkbox is to allow you to zoom way out, then it could be removed.

[vdeane]

Yes, I know this is old, but nothing has changed yet.

Another possibility would be to remember the last viewed location and zoom level in a cookie.

But the main thing for me is the ease or difficulty of getting around. In most mapping programs, if I'm looking, say, at New York and I want to look at California, I use the mouse wheel to scroll way out, then scroll back in. That doesn't work on travelmapping unless you turn off "Always Update Visible Routes", because when you zoom way out, there is so much data to download that it hangs. I think that there should be a zoom level above which it refuses to download anything, so that all you can do is move around. Indeed, if the only purpose of that checkbox is to allow you to zoom way out, then it could be removed.

Are you not familiar with the "jump" functionality?  You can enter a location and it will take you right there (IIRC, it even preserves your current zoom).  As for zooming out, people will have different tolerances for how long they'll wait (and the map doesn't require you to do so to pan, either), and that button is useful for other things, too (like it you want to zoom in and pan around an area without waiting on updates).

[pderocco]

Are you not familiar with the "jump" functionality?  You can enter a location and it will take you right there (IIRC, it even preserves your current zoom).  As for zooming out, people will have different tolerances for how long they'll wait (and the map doesn't require you to do so to pan, either), and that button is useful for other things, too (like it you want to zoom in and pan around an area without waiting on updates).

Yes, I'm familiar with it. But I don't want to have to type in the name of a place. The way I use Google Maps, Google Earth, and other mapping programs, is to move around by panning and zooming. It's very natural and fast and one-handed. And that's how I do it now, in Travel Mapping, but I have to remember to turn off the Always Update Visible Routes button, and then turn it on again, which negates the efficiency.

[Markkos1992]

And that's how I do it now, in Travel Mapping, but I have to remember to turn off the Always Update Visible Routes button, and then turn it on again, which negates the efficiency.

I have had that toggled off for a while.  I do not even think it has toggled back on after me erasing the cache in my browser.

[vdeane]

Are you not familiar with the "jump" functionality?  You can enter a location and it will take you right there (IIRC, it even preserves your current zoom).  As for zooming out, people will have different tolerances for how long they'll wait (and the map doesn't require you to do so to pan, either), and that button is useful for other things, too (like it you want to zoom in and pan around an area without waiting on updates).

Yes, I'm familiar with it. But I don't want to have to type in the name of a place. The way I use Google Maps, Google Earth, and other mapping programs, is to move around by panning and zooming. It's very natural and fast and one-handed. And that's how I do it now, in Travel Mapping, but I have to remember to turn off the Always Update Visible Routes button, and then turn it on again, which negates the efficiency.

Is there a reason you can't zoom/pan before the routes load?  I do and it works just fine for me.

[pderocco]

Is there a reason you can't zoom/pan before the routes load?  I do and it works just fine for me.

I tried that, and sometimes it works, but any pause and it seems to commit to loading a whole slew of stuff, and it no longer responds to the mouse. Just as a matter of software hygiene, it shouldn't be easy to put the software into a state where it hangs, and you have to reboot it, in this case by refreshing the page and starting over at Siena Collage in Loudonville, NY. I think that suppressing the loading when the area to be loaded exceeds a certain size would be easy to implement.

[vdeane]

Is there a reason you can't zoom/pan before the routes load?  I do and it works just fine for me.

I tried that, and sometimes it works, but any pause and it seems to commit to loading a whole slew of stuff, and it no longer responds to the mouse. Just as a matter of software hygiene, it shouldn't be easy to put the software into a state where it hangs, and you have to reboot it, in this case by refreshing the page and starting over at Siena Collage in Loudonville, NY. I think that suppressing the loading when the area to be loaded exceeds a certain size would be easy to implement.

Interesting... I don't think I've ever had that happened.  I remember when mapview first came out that there were issues with trying to pan overseas where eventually it would stop loading data, but that doesn't seem to happen any more.  In any case, someone might want to view a wide area, and some things require it (such as viewing the whole interstate system.  Trying to capture both is why the button is there; I don't think we should remove functionality just because you don't like clicking it.

[pderocco]

I'm using Edge, which is based on the Chrome engine.

If you zoom out to, say, the entire US, obviously it would take a long time to load all that data. But if it retained the ability to silently cancel the load and restart it over a new area if I zoomed and panned, then it would be fine. But it reliably freezes on me after ten seconds, making it impossible to pan or zoom until it's finished. And over a large area, it seems never to finish. If I try to pan or zoom while it's frozen, Edge pops up "This page isn't responding", giving me "Wait" or "Exit page" choices. Eventually, I have to reload the page. So this could be a Chrome-ism. So it would be nice if the software managed to avoid getting into that state.

Firefox still hangs for a bit sometimes, but always seems to recover.

[michih]

Firefox still hangs for a bit sometimes, but always seems to recover.

Loading FRA takes > 15 minutes. But it works with FF It's a "backend thing" on the server, i.e. the browser is just waiting for response. DB access is slow, drawing the graph ("in the browser") is very quick. Just have a try and change from "Highlight traveled" to "Highlight All", or from "Highway System Colors" to "Color By Travel Count". Damn quick.