MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#2Amazing how it still looks dated compared to Google Maps.
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#3It's difficult to interpret this mapquest version of live traffic conditions. They are showing the traffic on every tiny street all at the same time, not just major roads and highways, so it's hard to see what's even on the map at all. Google maps does a better job of leaving the smaller streets out of the traffic image, and then displaying them only when you zoom in.
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#4Amazing how it still looks dated compared to Google Maps.
It's audience is dated and not tech savvy - think Yahoo and AOL users. They cant get all flashy.
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#5The "360 view" (like Google's Street View) data for my city (Toronto) is wildly out of date. Across the office where I work there is an entire entertainment center complete with a 50 story condo on top -- which is entirely missing (and still shows a parking lot with cars parked in it) on MapQuest 360.
[edit: from the looks of some movie billboards at this intersection and a few other hints, it looks like the data is from mid-2006].
[edit 2: I just checked my own neighborhood and the building I currently live in, along with the neighboring building are both not yet built. Two condo towers south of my building are still only half-way built. MapQuest Maps == Street View Wayback Machine?]
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#6Amazing how it still looks dated compared to Google Maps.
Though I'm finding it speedier than Google Maps in Chrome. It's a bit refreshing.
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#7If by the title meaning that MapQuest is just getting into 21st Century in terms of design, then I agree. It's way too messy of a layout and the icons feel too generic. Come on MapQuest, do less!
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#8Mapquest's iphone app is excellent and provides free turn-by-turn navigation. Highly recommended.
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#9Doesn't have any of the streets by my place in Tokyo. Google's maps of the area show every building and streets that are no wider than a foot path.
Confusingly, it also shows tons of streets as dead ends. Two dead ends will almost meet when in fact the street continues right through. I wonder if they generated these maps algorithmically.
Here's an example from an area just outside Shibuya:
(I do like the mapquest owned short links though)
Re: MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design
#10I just get a blank, white page. I would expect a 21st century design to perhaps have a fallback in case JS is turned off, or even a simple "please turn on Javascript" message.
Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted, I'll say this: I've always maintained that sites need to gracefully handle the absence of javascript. In the past, (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1788856), people have correctly pointed out that not all startups have enough time and money to burn on handling a few percent of the population that keep their JS off. But I still think a huge site like MapQuest needs to be able to gracefully degrade, ESPECIALLY if it wants to compete with Google and Bing maps.