2006-01-24

Mobile maps - not just a joke any more!

I added two features to the mobile map page.

The first is simple - it now remembers your map size preference using a cookie, so if you visit on a PDA you can select the size you want and it'll remember. (If you have cookies disabled it should just remember within the session, but I haven't actually tested it.)

The second is actually useful - search! This is handy when you have a PDA at your disposal but not a full desktop computer and want to check on something. For example, I'm reading Gateway to the Stars (a Traveller novel) right now and I wanted to see if places they referenced were on the map. (They aren't.)

The UX is a little clunky. Suggestions? Split it into two pages? Put search results at the top? Ω

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is very cool, however I tried this on a Treo 700W and had some issues:

The Search/Jump capabilities did not work.

You can't zoom out to the entire Galaxy view.

It would be nice to have a drop down listing the views available.

Joshua Bell said...

Thanks for the feedback.

- Search/Jump - what doesn't work? What search terms did you try? What didn't happen that you expected, or happened that you didn't expect?

- Zoom out all the way - yeah, I have the same zoom limits for mobile as I do for the full version, but obviously the viewport is smaller. I'll ponder this.

- Drop-down listing the views - zoom levels? Obviously in a mobile form factor you want to reduce the UI as much as possible I'll ponder this too.