11–20 of 58 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
open street map?
Openstreetmap doesn't provide driving distances or routing itself. Project OSRM uses Openstreetmap data to provide this service: http://project-osrm.org/
[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing#Developers
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing/online_routers#Ro...
Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pr…
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pr…
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pr…
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
I find the Google apps have the most complicated and confusing UIs of all the apps I use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
I find the Google apps have the most complicated and confusing UIs of all the apps I use.
As a for-example, the new Google Maps for Android (7.x+) is much prettier than the old one but much more painful to use (still) in that it often makes you do 3+ button presses for things that used to be 1 button press, which is kind of a big deal for an app that people will often interact with (hopefully in some sort of dash mount) while driving.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Google keeps ruining maps with needless UI changes. I still occasionally drop down to Classic because some feature I use is hard to find or hasn't been ported yet.
example?
I was looking for the short url last week. It used to be near the top-right under something like "URL." Now, it's in the bottom-right, under the gear, then "share or embed map."
I was looking for satellite view for awhile, until I realized they renamed it to "Earth."
I just assumed they no longer offered a printable page with directions. When messing around for this comment I found it under "Details" after you look up driving directions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
Agreed. Google keeps ruining maps with needless UI changes. I still occasionally drop down to Classic because some feature I use is hard to find or hasn't been ported yet.
When I went to get directions a few weeks back and they told me that
a) I couldn't use Classic anymore, and
b) the new UI only had a drop-down for arrival time with half-hour increments, instead of letting me type a precise time (trains often arrive a couple minutes after the hour), and
c) they removed the option for getting public transit directions at all (that had been there and working in Classic for years),
I said three strikes and you're out and switched to Yahoo.
Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pr…
After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.
I imagine the wireframing process for the UI went something like this:
"What's the list of features we need to support?"
"Here it is"
"Okay, let's randomly scatter all of them all over the screen and bury the most used/useful things 2 or three levels deep in various menus. Reversing actions should require the user to go to different interface areas and we should clutter the interface with local photos that nobody is interested in since we already offer streetview. But let's make streetview hard to use, even though it was a solved interface problem before."
"Is that all?"
"No, let's go live before key functionality is active, like multiple-stop route planning, let's make it use webGL and make it a little crashy, and let's make sure that features that people use literally every day, like toll avoidance, won't remember being set ever and we'll bury it 2 levels deep in a different hamburger menu than the one that's always there and only shows up some of the time."
"Brilliant!"