Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish • Hacker News Board

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#111

Post by philwelch » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:01 AM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #11

dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go. On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty…

The Google Plus app suspiciously feels like a Webkit wrapper.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#112

Post by sutterbomb » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:01 AM UTC

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #109

nextparadigms wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine using Facebook without an app now?

The current Facebook mobile site is almost 1:1 with their app (on Android, anyway). I wouldn't surprised to know the app is one giant WebView with a few system hooks sprinkled in.

Yea pretty sure it is. David Fetterman gave a talk at F8 about how they approach it. I think the vid is online somewhere, but here's the transcript. http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/09/how-facebook-mobi...

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#113

Post by jroseattle » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:03 AM UTC

The most telling part of this experience was the discovery of how good open source mapping has become lately.

While it's the money that's forcing developers to look for alternative mapping solutions, it's also unleashing a wave of interest in open source maps. Those will undoubtedly get better as time passes.

I do believe Google will look back on the decision to start charging for their map products at the levels chosen as a bad one for themselves, but a great one for open source.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#114

Post by philwelch » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:05 AM UTC

AntiRush wrote: post #110

lazerwalker wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. If you don't have the app in question installed, you get a nasty "Page could not be found" error. There are hacky and unstable JS tricks you can pull with setTimeout to send the user to the app store if they don't have the app installed, but I haven't heard of any reliable way to deal with this (pretty glaring) failure case. Even just the ability to suppress the error message would be more or less fin…

How about loading the gplus:// link in a hidden iframe. Then continue to load the page in the browser. If they have the app installed, it will redirect, otherwise the page will just load in the browser.

But then you have an extraneous page loaded.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#115

Post by kapitalx » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:20 AM UTC

> they might have bad data, and there's very little you can do about it except report it and wait

You can actually go to Google MapMaker and modify things yourself. I've fixed many things to date. http://www.google.com/mapmaker

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#116

Post by ajtaylor » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:21 AM UTC

Thanks for all the excellent pointers, some of which I knew but most I did not. I'm happy things turned out so well for you.

We recently had to navigate the Google Maps licensing obstacle course at $work. I tried getting quotes from Bing, but it was just as hard to get a number since we could only go through resellers. In the end we negotiated down a bit and reduced our map usage. But the next go around I'm seriously considering taking some time to investigate doing the maps ourselves. TileMill looks gorgeous!

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#117

Post by drivebyacct2 » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:28 AM UTC

chc wrote: post #33

cryptoz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go. On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty…

Let me get this straight: You think it's more reasonable for Apple to have to build in special support so requests for webpages on plus.google.com go to the G+ app instead of Safari than for Google to just make their site work on mobile platforms like everybody else on the planet? You are, as the kids say, straight trippin'.

That's how Android Intents work, Apps can register to handle domains.

In my opinion, it's a far more elegant solution than encouraging developers to register pseudo-protocols to use in URLs that also result in very awkward interactions if the app's mobile site tries to redirect to the app and it is not installed. (Then again, this gives users a "choice" (!) of whether to open links or Intents in the mobile app or native app.)

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#118

Post by hendzen » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:44 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #95

dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

What causes that text blurring on iOS devices? I've encountered it on TechCrunch as well. By the way, Hacker News is fairly unreadable on an iPhone because the text is so small text width so great. I haven't found a mobile interface that allows me to log in and comment.

There's a paid app called news.yc that is the best HN app out there for iOS. Well worth the 2 bucks.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#119

Post by onedognight » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:47 AM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #10

kooshball wrote: post #7

I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title. >Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com) is simply misleading.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

> It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone

Try the new-in-iOS5 "Reader" button in the URL bar.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#120

Post by pud » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 1:58 AM UTC

Fortunately Google Maps' geocoding API limits still appear to be based on IP address. So if you do your API requests via client-side AJAX, you should be fine. That's because it's unlikely any individual user will make more than 25,000 requests in a day.