Bug Fix: Opera/Safari Searching

David Somers reported an issue with searching on Opera and Safari - odd, since I tested those browsers!

It turned out that search worked, but the options panel didn't reconfigure to make more room for the search results, so on small screens the results would be hidden. I think this dated back from the browser compatibility work from a while back... and I just assumed those browsers were buggy. Oops - turned out to be a subtle JavaScript issue - comparing an uninitialized parameter against null instead of undefined. It only worked because IE and Firefox apparently would report that state as === null and === undefined, even though null !== undefined. Weird.

Anyway, fixed. Ω

Beta: Overlay Rectangle

On request, I've added a follow-on to the You Are Here feature in Beta for iframe:

Overlay Rectangle:

• Specify ox, oy, ow and oh as the x, y, width and height of an overlay box in map coordinates.
  
• This is rendered as a translucent overlay on top of the map. The appearance is hard-coded.
  
• This is supported for IFRAME only. There is no option for the user to move or remove the overlay.
• The details of this API are subject to change without warning.
  

Atlas of the Imperium coverage area:
http://www.travellermap.com/iframe.htm?ox=-111.95&oy=80&ow=166.614&oh=200

Spinward Marches:
http://www.travellermap.com/iframe.htm?ox=-112.104&oy=80&ow=27.776&oh=40 Ω

Afachtiabr (Far Frontiers)

Courtesy of James Kundert (a.k.a. GypsyComet), the coreward half of Far Frontiers, a.k.a. Afachtiabr, is now filled in. This is based on his work originally published in The Traveller Chronicle, rounding out Dale Kemper's rimward half originally developed for FASA.

Also, I improved the rendering of asteroids at high scales. I played with a few algorithms for "random, but not actually random" positioning. Ω

Jump Maps, You Are Here, and More

I was out of town for several days with my computer but no Internet connection and evenings to myself, so I did a fair bit of work on the site. A lot of the work went into fielding requested features.

What's New:

• Added JumpMap API - generate a Jump-N map for any location

• Keyboard scrolling is now enabled in IFRAMEs
• You will want to specify SCROLLING="no" in the IFRAME tag on your site
• Asteroids are now rendered as semi-random clusters of ellipses at high scales
• Add MapOptions.ForceHexes (add 8192 to always draw hexagonal parsecs, not squares)

[UPDATE 2008-02-03] Fixed use of ForceHexes for the main page and IFRAME - it was being masked out. Should work now.

• Tweak min scales for features to support 24 & 48 pixels/parsec more nicely
• Lots of API documentation cleanup
  

Beta:

• iframe.htm now takes "You Are Here" parameters (yah_sx, sah_sy, yah_hx, yah_hy) that define a sector/hex pair to put a marker on - example. There can be only one such marker, and there is no UI (or finalized script API) to set, move, or clear it.

Fixes:

• Combat client-side memory bloat by:
• Clearing tile cache after following a non-animated link
  
• Request metadata with a time threshold, to avoid hundreds of aborted HTTP requests
• Fix candy background tiling for legend (caused by a floating point underflow issue in GDI+)

Plus lots of (hopefully) invisible internal changes. Ω

TODO List

Here's my "To Do" list for the site. Many of these are probably incomprehensible, but I thought I'd share anyway

• FEATURE: Support custom data for sector.htm LBB generator
  
• LOC: Detect language setting "Accept-Language:", serve Japanese version (it turns out a lot of the site traffic is from Japan. Go figure!)
  
• IMPL/FEATURE: Style object that's data only
• Cache object for brushes, etc
• Allow passing in via parameters (options and scale are presets)
• Scale is just a seed - use next-highest scale
• FEATURE: Search by regex on (UWP, PBG, ...)
• BUG: Terra should look like Earth in Candy style
  
• BUG: iframe doesn't show if "Disable script debugging" is unchecked (WTF?) - IE bug? Maybe cookies can't be loaded or something?
  
• IMPL/PERF: Add more condensed route storage (perf, size)
• QUALITY: Investigate DrawClosedCurve for candy borders
• FEATURE: Style options - hexes at every level
• QUALITY: Up the JPEG quality for Candy a bit
• DATA: Incorporate Theron sector from BeRKA (?)
  
• DATA: Incorporate Uistilao sector from BeRKA (?)
• DATA: Use Kaa'G!kul data from HIWG (?)
• DATA: Incorporate MWM's new T5 data
• IMPL: Reconsider JavaScript class/object style
• Use Class.prototype.func = function() ... rather than this.func, and other extern logic
• Verify that inline functions for event handlers aren't leaking memory
• FEATURE: Support different data sets (Judge's Guild, etc)

What else should I have on the list? Ω